Class 




BookiiCs; 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

REVELATIONS 
OF NATURE 



A Philosophic Essay 

Based on 

Many Discoveries of Mighty Import 

Made by the Author 

and Divided in Three Parts 



II 



LEON ID AS GUILLEMET 

Author and Publisher 

2 2 CLAY STREET 

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 
1905 






(eceivea j 



JUN 26 1905 

OOPY S, 



COPYRIGHT, 1905 

i?y Francois Leonidas Guillemet 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



PRESS OF 

THE MYSELL-ROLLINS CO. 

San Francisco, Cal. 

1905 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

PART I 7 

Discoveries Unparalleled Since the Days of Newton. 
Perpetual Motion is Solvable and Solved. 

PART II 65 

Forces of Matter. Celestial Mechanism. 

PART III 170 

Life and Spirit. The Infinite. Immortality. 



PREFACE. 



The reader who may not agree with the views ex- 
pressed in this essay is respectfully requested not to 
pass judgment upon them offhand at first reading, 
and to cast off any prejudice. It will generally take 
several readings before everything said is fully 
grasped, engraved and correlated in the mind for per- 
mitting impartial criticism. Any proposition never 
heard of before may seem an absurdity at first sight 
and yet may become an obvious truth subsequently. 
That is because it usually takes time for the human 
mind to become accustomed to new ideas. That is 
also why the first literary work of authors who are 
not imitators is seldom appreciated before they have 
acquired fame. 

Without making any claim to literary ability the 
author feels that the intelligent reader should find in 
this book abundant food for thought and that is its 
essential purpose. 



THE REVELATIONS OF NATURE. 

PART I. 

Discoveries Unparalleled Since the Time of Newton* 

Perpetual Motion is Solvable and Solved. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

The writer has none of the ponderous authority 
which gives real (or fictitious) weight to anything 
said or written by persons whose scientific standing 
and position give them prominence. His share of 
knowledge on scientific subjects and any subject is 
only a very minute fraction of that possessed by such 
persons. He is simply a "man in the street/' There- 
fore he does not claim to possess what is generally 
conceded to be the highest order of education or learn- 
ing, but he claims to be able to give some pointers on 
some subjects to those who possess such advantages. 
At all events, he gives here some of his thoughts for 
scientific men to weigh and scrutinize if they have the 
leisure and patience. (Those approached hitherto had 
apparently neither.) 



8 The Revelations of Nature. 

He is not looking for any authorities on the subjects 
treated, but pretends to have made great discoveries, 
and if there is any authority in the matter, he is that 
authority. The reader may and should take it for 
what it is worth if he can find out and no more. True, 
he, (the writer), has no precious "reputation to lose," 
but he has one to make and is not so much indifferent 
as to what may become of it. He does not wish to 
appear pretentious ; there is no pretension about it at 
all, but what he has to say will be said without restraint 
as to matter of form. This is not a question of fine 
academic style, conventionalities or sham modesty, but 
one of truth. Being merely seeking the truth he shall 
ever be found willing to retrace his steps whenever 
found on the wrong path, provided reasonable evidence 
is adduced. 

Most writers studiously avoid the use of the pronoun 
"I" as much as possible, using "we" instead most fre- 
quently. This is akin to the ancient custom of hiding 
the number 13 under the cover of "12 bis," so the gods 
could not see it. The leap over to 14 was thus safely 
accomplished. For my part I will not try to conceal 
my identity and put the responsibility for what I say 
upon somebody's else shoulders, for I am only one and 
don't pretend to be many. Being the writer of the 



The Revelations of Nature. 9 

book I can see no good reason for hiding behind a 
screen, as this would make mighty little difference to 
the value of what is said. Therefore I will say III, 
whenever that expression is the most handy and suit- 
able. This is a free country. Foolish customs of all 
shades are plentiful enough to make comfortable up- 
holstery to sit on. 

PERPETUAL MOTION. 

The scornful haughty disdain with airs of commis- 
eration of scientific men for the seeker after the Per- 
petuum Mobile and their heaping of slur, ridicule and 
abuse upon his head, trusting in their exalted superior 
knowledge, is something proverbial and universal. 
"It is no use talking, you cannot get something for 
nothing/' they say, or something equivalent. Well, 
no, not so long as you don't know how, (and the know- 
ing how is something), but such an assertion is pre- 
sumptuous in the extreme, and utterly unwarranted 
and unjudicious so long as all the forces and secrets 
of Nature are not fully understood, and it does not 
appear that they are. "You cannot cheat Nature/* 
they say again. No, but oh! how beautifully Nature 
can cheat you, as she has done so many a time without 
any scruples with scientists who pretended to set a 



10 The Revelations of Nature. 

limit to her powers. Of course, perpetual motion with- 
out means to generate energy permanently is an im- 
possibility, as far as present knowledge goes at least, 
but to find such means is not, and these being found, 
it is perpetual motion all the same, or something on 
the same plan if you please, and science does not ad- 
mit the possibility of the one any more than that of 
the other. The very mention of perpetual motion is 
a scarecrow. It is an absurdity born of human 
vagaries. Such notion is the rankest nonsense and 
is good only for ignoramuses and cranks. Here is a 
sample of what science has to say from the Encyclo- 
pedia Brittanica : " . . . If a man likes to in- 
dulge in the notion that, after all, an exception to the 
law of the conservation of energy may be found, and 
provided he submits his idea to the test of experiment 
at his own charges without annoying his neighbors, 
all that can be said is that he is engaged in an un- 
promising enterprise. The case is otherwise with the 
projector who comes forward with some machine 
which claims by the mere ingenuity of its contrivance 
to multiply the energy supplied to it from some of 
the ordinary sources of nature and sets to work to 
pester scientific men to examine his supposed dis- 



The Revelations of Nature. \ \ 

covery, or attempts therewith to induce the credulous 
to waste their money/' 

So, lofty science holds its foot upon it and Nature 
cannot help it if she would. It is clear, therefore, that 
science will have nothing to do with it; so much so 
that the announcement to that effect was made by the 
French Academy of Sciences over a century ago, 
(1775) and has been closely adhered to by all scien- 
tific bodies ever since ; so that we shall have to do 
without science, taking this bull by the horns. This 
is a nut hard to crack, but with the proper tools it can 
be done. Moreover, at the present day this attitude 
of science is probably more a question of terms em- 
ployed for expressing an idea than an objection to the 
idea itself, for a great many scientists assume that 
some inexhaustible source of energy might incident- 
ally be discovered ; many think it will. But if that 
source is not to be discovered in the known forces of 
Nature, there is a great deal less likelihood of its 
being found in any unknown force or the less under- 
stood, or in some imaginary entity, such as the ether. 
The secrets of Nature do not drop down in a bundle 
with everything explained. 

Many scientists usually style it a great audacity 
when they advance some notion out of the usual run 
with or without, (more often without), Nature's testi- 



\2 The Revelations of Nature, 

monials. There may be audacity in presenting a 
bogus check at the bank counter, but the bearer of the 
genuine is fearless, no matter what the figure involved 
may be. 

Nature finds the means to move the universe for 
nothing, but our scientific men appear to think that 
God once gave it such a tremendous kick as a starter 
that it will never stop. This was a centrifugal kick, 
of course, or otherwise central anyhow. 

Thus while perpetual motion at retail, as applying 
to mechanics, is emphatically declared an impossi- 
bility, it is fully admitted at wholesale when applying 
to the motion of the universal machine. But it so 
happens that science holds precisely the wrong view 
in both cases, for the universe could not move with- 
out expenditure of energy any more than our ma- 
chines, and our machines as well as the world can find 
in Nature an everlasting supply of energy to move 
them when we know how. The writer assumes that 
he does know and is positive about it. The motion of 
the universe is purely mechanical; the forces moving 
it and those which move our machines are the very 
same ones. Or would they exist merely for the de- 
light and convenience of man, who does not even 
understand them? He may well believe that as he 



The Revelations of Nature. 13 

once believed the whole universe was revolving around 
him for the same purpose. In the Newtonian gravi- 
tational theory, heat, electricity and magnetism 
(which are real forces, not effects of force) are not 
assumed to be a factor in the motion of the universe, 
since according to said theory the universe moves 
without expenditure of energy. Newton discovered 
gravitation, but did not discover the cause of it. His 
explanation of the phenomena which was at first ap- 
pearance a working hypothesis was good enough for 
his time, since none better could possibly be found 
then, but it is time at last to hammer down this old 
crumbling relic which has done duty for two centuries 
and is now blocking the march of progress. 

The very existence of the real forces of Nature cre- 
ates the inevitable necessity of a perpetual and univer- 
sal motion, for said forces being everlasting are forever 
at work, and as they do that work without the assist- 
ance of man, they can move his machines permanently, 
too, provided he makes the right ones. These things 
in time scientists will find out, but it can hardly be 
expected that they will do so at once. Old rooted and 
universal prejudice takes time to die out. An eminent 
psychologist in treating of the actions of the mind 
says : "It is miraculous how little judgment even 



14 The Revelations of Nature. 

scientific men often use when investigating a thing 
about which they have preconceived notions.'' As far 
as the experience of the writer goes, this is absolutely 
true, and the story of the subversions in doctrines and 
opinions concerning scientific and other subjects 
abundantly prove it. Such subversions take place very 
slowly and not at once, even in the light of absolute 
evidence which clearly establishes a new truth. This 
accounts for the struggles and persecution of the au- 
thors of many great discoveries. Great discoveries 
are great principally from the fact that they meet with 
opposition and obstacles from all sides. Preconceived 
notions are comparable to and probably related with 
hypnotic suggestion which blinds the reasoning facul- 
ties. In any event, they usually show a lack of inde- 
pendence of judgment with too much reliance on the 
judgment of the majority or that of some authority 
and the length of time this judgment has been upheld. 
If a wrong view concerning any particular thing has 
been handed down from age to age for ten thousand 
years, this will not make it right any more than if it 
had been upheld only for ten minutes, but it will be 
immensely more difficult to set aside and few will be 
found to dispute it. This disposition of man's mind 
is directly responsible for the perpetuation of errors. 



The Revelations of Nature. 15 

But if science is slow in recognizing its errors, the 
truth is bound to come to the surface in the end 
nevertheless. Every great discovery that is coming to 
light in our day should convince scientific men of the 
conservative school that they know mighty little about 
the secrets of Nature, but they do not feel that way, 
although they sometimes profess to do so, yet will un- 
hesitatingly proclaim the absurdity of any startling but 
unverified discovery that does not match with their 
accepted formulae without even taking the trouble 
to look into it carefully or not at all. What is not 
possible in one way or any known way does not neces- 
sarily imply that there is no principle in Nature which 
makes it possible, even if looked for in vain for cen- 
turies. 

Of course there are many fallacies in alleged dis- 
coveries, but there are many fallacies in the teach- 
ings of science, too, and scientists never realize it until 
their teachings are thoroughly shattered. Conserva- 
tive, classic, pure (?) science is content to stand on 
long trodden ground, even if it is a blind alley and 
there "zealously guards its acquisitions/' only to see 
them vanish one after another. 

The following paragraph extracted from a humorous 
article headed "Science and Common Sense/' by 



16 The Revelations of Nature. 

George Bernard Shaw, and reproduced in the English 
Mechanic and World of Science (Eng.) of April 13, 
1900, is a little gem. Here it is : 

"Science is the whole fascinating body of specu- 
lation concerning what we do not know. The fact 
that science claims with absolute conviction a 
special and sacred infallibility of its own which 
distinguishes it from the superstition of the augur 
and soothsayer, the medicine man and witch doctor, 
the faith healer and medium, the yogi and lama, the 
priest and parson, is the conclusive proof that it is 
generically identical with them, since they all make 
that very claim with that very conviction." 

This is probably even more true than the author 
had in mind. If all the absolute scientific knowledge 
— I mean absolute truth — were put together in a scale, 
it would make a very poor showing indeed. Theories 
and doctrines succeed each other as night succeeds 
day, but none is assured of perfect stability as to basic 
causes, and without knowing the causes we cannot 
fully understand the effects. Furthermore, there are 
many different views in scientific as well as in religious 
matters. In both cases this diversity of opinion is 
caused by the influence of "suggestion" a great deal 
more than by that of truth. 



The Revelations of Nature. ] 7 

Yet with all that it cannot be gainsaid that true 
scientific investigation and research is the principal 
base of all progress, but dogmatism born from pre- 
conceived notions is its stumbling block. 

I fondly hope that truly progressive scientific men 
will not get mad at the little teasings contained herein, 
as they are not intended for them, but will assume 
that those who might feel incensed at any of the fore- 
going and subsequent remarks are the reactionary ele- 
ment which has to be fought to the teeth as usual 
every time a departure marking a step forward in 
any direction is advanced. 

Concerning the views expressed here, however, we 
need not quarrel. Every one can have it all his own 
way who don't like my way, but am prepared to 
receive without flinching the usual abuses and ridicule 
generally served to innovators. I should like, how- 
ever, to find out whether the impartiality and good 
faith of the world of science in its quest after truth 
is real or only a pretense where sect, cast and dogma 
are the ruling principles. 

As regards perpetual motion, all former attempts 
at solving it were necessarily doomed to failure, except 
possibly in one instance, because no way and prin- 
ciples permitting to get something for nothing or 



jg The Revelations of Nature, 

something that cost nothing if you prefer, had been 
discovered. 

What is the one case in which the attempt had any 
chance of success? It is not very old; it was a living 
issue in the press a few years ago, although all that 
was said was of course in vehement condemnation of 
the heresy, which the writers thought they had buried 
so deep that it could never again come to the surface. 
It was the case of Mr. Tripler of liquid air fame. He 
did not appear to have really discovered any great law 
or principle of Nature and was merely groping about 
in the dark, but he was on the right track without 
knowing it. He, and no doubt many others, had 
probably secret hopes of reaching the goal, but he 
dreamed of a thing that he apparently could not handle 
properly, and he denied some statements attributed to 
him, as published in an article on liquid air in the 
McClure Magazine for March, 1899. In this said 
article Mr. Tripler is represented as repeatedly asking, 
"What becomes of all this heat anyway?" (That 
whose removal or disappearance in some way caused 
liquefaction of the air in his machine.) Mr. Tripler 
was puzzled, but did not give the answer to this burn- 
ing question, which is a most vital one, and his tra- 
ducers disposed of it by simply ignoring it, some of 



The Revelations of Nature. 19 

them giving instead some calculations which prove 
nothing at all concerning the unknown quantity — the 
secrets of Nature. 

Nearly one year before this question appeared in 
print in the said article, (April 12, 1898), the writer 
happened to pose the same question to himself and 
claims to have discovered the answer at the same mo- 
ment. It is given hereinafter. 

LIQUEFACTION OF GASES. 

It was early held that the heat of compression of a 
gas was generated by the act of compression itself, 
but subsequently this theory was upset and another 
theory substituted therefor in which it is assumed that 
the heat of compression is caused by a condensation 
of the normal heat of the gas. At the present time 
there seems to be a revulsion toward the earlier 
theory, or rather uncertainty or indefiniteness as to 
what really takes place. 

In any event it is assumed that the reason why a 
gas liquefies is because some of its heat is extracted 
from it when not liquefied by pressure alone. 

Then a great problem in physics presents itself here 
whose true solution is of momentous capital import- 
ance. The question is this : 



20 The Revelations of Nature. 

When a gas is liquefied by mechanical means is its 
normal heat really extracted from it, or is the heat 
made to disappear from the gas by any other action 
than that of extraction or radiation into space, which 
is equivalent? 

If it is the normal heat of the gas that is extracted 
by the cold water usually used in refrigerating plants, 
then this normal heat must be condensed by the act 
of compression of the gas and elevated in degree by 
the condensation. 

But we will presently see that this notion of the 
normal heat of the gas being extracted is an amazing 
absurdity and that the heat which is extracted by 
cold water or other agency was created by the act of 
compression of the gas. 

This is the case at least for all the heat exceeding 
in degree the normal temperature of the gas before 
compression. 

I would say in the first place that the capacity of 
a gas for retaining or absorbing heat does not change 
whether it is under pressure or not. ioo cubic feet of 
atmospheric air, for instance, condensed into one cubic 
foot contain just as much heat as before the condensa- 
tion if the temperature is the same. Otherwise what 



The Revelations of Nature. 21 

would give it the ioo atmospheres pressure it con- 
tains? 

Is it not heat that develops pressure within 
a confined fluid? What would give confined liquid 
air the capacity for developing a pressure of 800 
atmospheres on reaching the normal temperature if it 
could not contain normally as much heat in the con- 
fined as in the non-confined state, and that without 
showing any difference on the scale of temperature? 
If any part of the normal heat contained in a volume 
of gas could be squeezed out of it the whole of its heat 
could be squeezed out for that matter, and as long as 
the gas should be prevented from expanding it could 
not again reabsorb the normal heat it contains in the 
free state or even part of same. Compressing a gas by 
mechanical means without adding to its normal heat 
has in one sense the same effect as adding to its heat 
without compressing it by mechanical means, i. e., in 
both cases it is brought under stress if confined, and 
in both cases it is the heat contained within it that 
causes the stress. 

When a gas is under pressure it is really the heat 
it contains that is under pressure, but the heat shows 
no difference of degree, it only shows a disposition to 
expand with the gas that contains it. This is also 



22 The Revelations of Nature. 

proof that both heat and cold are contained by matter 
and that where there would be no matter neither heat 
nor cold could exist. 

Void space can have no temperature. 

Then if at the normal temperature of the atmosphere 
a given amount of air contains an equal amount of 
heat whatever be the pressure, it is quite evident that 
the heat of compression which is of a degree higher 
than the normal does not form part of the heat con- 
tained in the air before the compression, but was gen- 
erated by the latter and is added to the original heat 
of the air, but gradually radiates into space or is other- 
wise extracted. Consequently the extraction of this 
heat of compression does not extract any of the ori- 
ginal heat of the air or any other gas. The reason it is 
of a higher degree is not because the normal heat was 
condensed, for if it could be condensed by compression 
of the gas so as to rise on the scale of temperature, 
the removal of the excess of heat above the normal 
after compression should also remove the pressure, and 
with no pressure in the gas, the latter could only ex- 
pand gradually by reabsorption of heat. (This it 
does only after liquefaction.) By compressing the gas 
further and further and removing the heat of compres- 
sion at the same time, the gas would finally liquefy 



The Revelations of Nature. 23 

at the normal temperature, but no temperature below 
the normal could be attained. 

Ho\yever, the removal of the heat of compression 
only removes the excess of pressure caused by it; 
that is because none of the original heat of the gas is 
removed so long as the temperature of the heat ab- 
sorbing agent is not below the normal temperature of 
the gas. If the water employed for removing the heat 
of compression had a temperature below its normal 
at the time of using it, then some of its normal heat 
would have to be disposed of before employing the 
water for cooling the gas. 

When a gas under pressure is allowed to expand 
suddenly or continuously through a narrow nozzle, 
however, some heat disappears to be sure until the 
gas liquefies, and here comes the rub. Is the heat 
destroyed? Heat being a force of nature, how can it 
be destroyed? 

In the method now used for liquefying air on a 
commercial scale known as the regenerative process, 
one type of which is embodied in the Linde's machine, 
the air under pressure expanding continually through 
a needle valve or nozzle is cooled to such an extent 
that part of the expanding air is liquefied on issuing 
out of the nozzle, and that which does not liquefy is 



24 The Revelations of Nature 

yet cold enough to cool the air rushing toward the 
nozzle. Consequently it does not carry with it the heat 
of that part of the air which has been liquefied on ex- 
panding since it is itself colder than before expansion. 

It is evident, therefore, that it is the act of expansion 
that causes the disappearance of the normal heat of the 
air. What becomes of it? 

I take no stock in the latent heat story, at least as 
far as gases are concerned. It has no place here any- 
way, for it would be the same thing as to say that one 
gallon of liquid air contains as much heat as an equal 
amount of air at the normal temperature, but that in 
one case the heat is apparent and in the other latent, 
which need no refutation. 

The explanation of science varies to suit the cir- 
cumstances. In one instance science says that the 
heat is extracted, and when this explanation does not 
suit the case, science says that the heat is rendered 
latent. Which is which? Neither. For instance, in 
reference to the liquefaction and evaporation of air in 
a report from the Patent Office refuting my views, I 
see the following curious statement, which, however, is 
apparently in accordance with present scientific 
notions : "Heat is merely transformed into in- 
termolecular energy, i. e., the air in vaporising absorbs 



The Revelations of Nature. 25 

the latent heat of air vapor." If this has any admiss- 
ible meaning I fail to grasp it and it reminds me of 
Voltaire's definition of metaphysics : "When two men 
are talking together and that the one who is talking 
does not understand himself while the one who listens 
seems to understand, that is metaphysics." 

Other scientific statements are that when a com- 
pressed gas expands its heat is rendered latent, which 
eventually causes it to liquefy. If the heat is extracted 
it is not rendered latent; if it is rendered latent it is 
not extracted ; yet it would have to be both to explain 
all the phenomena connected with the liquefaction 
and the evaporation of gases according to the present 
views of science. It might be contended that a part of 
the heat is extracted and the other part rendered 
latent, but such argument could not hold water. Na- 
ture's laws do not operate half one way and half the 
other way. 

As regards the liquefaction of air the heat is not 
absorbed by anything; neither is it destroyed but only 
transformed. Transformed into what? It is not 
transformed into work as the present admitted theory 
would have it ; this is another absurdity as will be seen 
presently. The heat is transformed into cold, and 
cold being transformed heat is a force of Nature! The 



26 Tke Revelations of Nature. 

sole fact that a temperature below the normal average 
temperature of bodies at any given time or latitude can 
be attained at all as well as a temperature above said 
normal is a positive proof that cold is a force whatever 
may be the means used for producing it artificially. 
It is well known that the evaporation of a liquid or 
solid produces cold, but this is clearly a physical action 
which has nothing to do with extraction of heat ; it is 
rather external heat which causes the evaporation and 
is thereby transformed into cold. This is what is 
proven by Pictet's experiments described in the 
Scientific American of March 31, 1900, in which the 
heat absorbed by the liquid air in his apparatus, not 
only at the surface but within the mass of the liquid, 
causes it to evaporate while the evaporation destroys 
this heat as such. 

The theory of latent heat is a myth which was 
accepted for lack of any better explanation. The fact, 
for instance, that a determined amount of ice absorbs 
a determined amount of heat to melt it all before the 
melted ice can get warmer than the ice itself is meant 
that a determined amount of ice can transform a de- 
termined amount of heat into cold and no more than 
that amount. The same may be said of water evapor- 
ating into free space ; about four-fifths of the heat put 



The Revelations of Nature, 27 

into the water is transformed into cold by the evapor- 
ation, but the heat is not transformed when the 
evaporation takes place into a closed vessel because the 
space for expansion is limited. Any other related 
phenomena may be explained in an analogous manner. 
There is no reason whatever for assuming that the 
evaporation of warmed water does not generate cold 
as well as the evaporation of any other body at normal 
temperature. Evaporation wherever and whenever it 
occurs is a physical action whose effect is the trans- 
formation of heat into cold when taking place in the 
open free space, and not an absorption or a hiding 
of heat. This is thoroughly in accord with observed 
facts and I propose to demonstrate it by practical ex- 
periments. That will be the end of the fancy latent or 
hidden heat which has been playing hide and seek in 
the minds of scientists since the advent of Blake's 
theory. Really, heat and cold are the opposite poles 
of a single force of matter which is temperature, and 
this is the key that will unlock many priceless treasures 
of Nature's secrets. 

If cold were not a force or else one pole of temper- 
ature, how could it contract or condense matter? If 
cold were nothing in itself but merely the more or less 
complete absence of heat as at present held by science, 



28 The Revelations of Nature. 

the removal of the heat should leave the matter in the 
state of expansion it had acquired by the presence of 
the heat and no contraction or condensation could ever 
take place of itself after expansion whether the heat 
were present in the matter or not. Yet we know that 
the force of contraction is a tremendous one which in 
the case of freezing water takes the expansive form 
and is capable of producing a pressure estimated at 
30,000 pounds per square inch, or about three times as 
much as could be secured from confined liquid air. 
Every rain drop tells us that this drop was formed by 
the attractive force of cold ; no rain drops could be 
formed without such an attractive force since con- 
densation involves molecular motion of matter, and 
contractive molecular motion is just as much an effect 
of force as expansive molecular motion. This is such 
a self-evident proposition that it is to be wondered 
why it was ever viewed otherwise. And if any one 
still clings to the theory that cold is nothing, let him 
burn his fingers with liquid air and this may possibly 
have a more persuasive effect than words, unless he 
prefers to believe that it is heat only that burns, even 
when it is absent. 

Then cold being transformed heat, heat is trans- 



The Revelations of Nature, 29 

formed cold for that matter, but this subject will be 
taken up again farther on. 



No heat can be transformed into work for the very 
simple reason that heat is a force of Nature and work 
is not. In other words, heat is a cause, indestructible, 
though variable in form or degree, while work or mo- 
tion is only an effect which lasts only as long as the 
cause is in action. So that the transformation of heat 
into motion would mean its absolute annihilation in 
all forms with nothing to take its place. 

Work is a result of the transformation of heat into 
cold or of cold into heat and is an effect which may 
or may not be produced by either form of transforma- 
tion, though, of course, molecular motion must in- 
variably take place in either form. The heat required 
to operate a steam engine for instance has been 
evolved out of cold, but none of the heat has been 
transformed into work. It is one of the many cases of 
creation of multiple, different effects by a single cause 
observable in Nature, which will be referred to again. 

The doing of work may store some potential heat 
in some forms, such as the lifting of weights that re- 
main lifted, and part of this potential heat can be 
recovered by means adapted to cause its appearance 



30 Thi 'Revelations $f Nature. 

by the fall of the weights, but if heat were transformed 
into work, where is any potential heat to be found 
stored in liquid air? The cold is all that remains to 
show for the work done in liquefying it and for the 
vanished heat, while the work itself as an entity is no 
more. The work performed is the creation of cold out 
of heat which is transformation. 

Some argumenters may say that as heat is destroyed 
one way by the expansion, it is created the other way 
by the compression and that there is therefore com- 
pensation and no real loss of heat. Even if valid their 
arguments would not prove that heat is ever trans- 
formed into work or invalidate the contention that 
heat is transformed into cold, for the heat that disap- 
pears by expansion and that which is generated by 
compression is not the same heat singled out as dis- 
tinct from the normal ; the creation and disappearance 
of heat are not necessarily simultaneous in the pro- 
cess of cooling a gas. But besides where is any com- 
pensation to be found for the heat that disappears by 
expansion when the pressure has been secured without 
the production of any heat of compression, such as 
would be the case if liquid air were confined into a 
closed vessel until it had reached the normal temper- 



The Revelations of Nature. 31 

ature? In that case the expansion of this air would 
destroy heat with none to compensate for its loss. 

When a gas is compressed by mechanical means, 
the act of compression generates heat, and if this heat 
could not be removed it would stand in the way and 
effectually prevent all possibility of liquefying the 
gas, but as it can be removed, after it is removed the 
expansion of the compressed gas generates cold which 
may be considered the equivalent of the removed heat, 
and this provides means to reach the point of lique- 
faction of the gas. The heat of compression created 
in liquefying a gas is then compensated by the cold 
of expansion through which an initial supply of liquid 
may be produced, and it may be assumed that this 
heat of compression would be sufficient to bring the 
liquid back to the normal temperature of the gas, so 
that so far there would be no loss or gain of heat. On 
the other hand, when a supply of the liquefied gas has 
thus been secured, if the liquid be confined in a closed 
vessel it will soon develop pressure by the obsorption 
of heat, and this heat is bound to be destroyed or 
transformed, since the pressure in the gas cannot be 
removed without this action taking place. Assuming 
that it is the heat of compression itself that is 
put back into the liquid after confining it, the original 



32 The Revelations of Nature. 

amount of heat would still remain unchanged, but the 
gas would be under a tremendous pressure and this 
would not be removed without producing cold for 
which there would be no more heat as a compensa- 
tion. This gas would then be in condition to cool and 
liquefy itself again and this time there would be no 
heat of compression to put into it to bring it back to 
its normal temperature. The operation being once 
started in a suitable machine, the transformation of 
heat into cold would go on indefinitely and the ma- 
chine would be a Cold Engine, since it is the creation 
of cold that would generate energy, in the same way 
that it is the creation of heat that generates energy 
in a heat engine of any type. 

It must be apparent therefore that the spontaneous 
appearance and disappearance of heat as occurring in 
compression and expansion respectively of any gas 
are opposite effects caused by physical actions. But 
it seems that heat is being constantly transformed into 
cold on the whole surface of the earth in many differ- 
ent ways, and it appears even likely that whenever 
any two or more bodies at different temperatures are 
brought together so as to make them equalize in tem- 
perature, some heat is transformed into cold. 

Thus when one volume of water at o° C. is mixed 



The Revelations of Nature. 33 

with an equal volume of water at ioo° C. the temper- 
ature of the mixture is found to be 44 ° C. instead of 50, 
which shows that 12 of heat have disappeared since 
we have ioo° of heat in one volume of water and only 
44 in twice that volume ; twice 44 is 88 and 12 short 
of 100. The disappearance of heat would probably 
increase as the proportion of cold to hot water were 
increased, and also with the increase of difference 
between the temperature of the hot and cold water. 
This probably contains the true explanation of the 
alleged transformation of heat into work when the 
heat is doing work. This apparent transformation of 
heat into work would in reality be a transformation of 
heat into cold caused by the slowing up of the expan- 
sion of steam in doing work giving it more time to 
cool or equalize with other bodies. It is no doubt also 
the reason why unaccountable losses are found in all 
transformations of energy. What takes place between 
heat and cold must equally take place between elec- 
tricity and magnetism. 



I have devised some practical apparatuses for lique- 
fying air with liquid air without any fuel being re- 
quired ; said apparatuses employ new physical and 
mechanical principles which would make my ideas 



34 7 hi Revelations of "Nature, 

much more apparent if I could describe them here, 
but cannot do so before my rights are fully protected. 
While no trials of my invention have been made, some 
trials will be made in time and I long for the day when 
I will be able to give practical demonstrations that 
will amaze the skeptics. In fact, I sincerely regret to 
give this for publication before being able to give such 
demonstrations, but as usual with most great practical 
discoveries, skepticism has been in my way so far and 
I must attempt first to dispel it in part at least. 
"There is something in the air" this time, and it is 
neither a castle nor a rainbow, neither a Keeley fraud. 



While what has been said before would be sufficient 
to establish the fact that cold is transformed heat, 
further demonstrations of this fact may be given, as it 
is in a large measure a foundation for all the rest, but 
all the rest tends also to establish the fact directly or 
indirectly by reciprocal inductive evidence. Besides 
this fact is the backbone of my inventions, and I 
frankly admit that if I were mistaken in regard to it, 
they could in all likelihood be classed among the many 
schemes that have failed ; but my inventions them- 
selves will prove the strongest evidence of my allega- 
tions, and in fact said inventions were the direct cause 



The Revelations of Nature. 35 

of my discovery of the true nature of cold ; so that in- 
vention preceded discovery, which shows that inven- 
tion and investigation go hand in hand and that inven- 
tion may lead to discovery as well as discovery to in- 
vention, contrary to the views of scientific investigators 
and teachers who consider the inventor as a follower 
in their lead. In fact, invention itself is a kind of dis- 
covery. Thousands of inventions in electricity have 
been made but our scientific investigators have not 
told us yet what electricity is. 

INVERTED METHODS OF LIQUEFYING 
GASES. CREATION OF ENERGY. 

I will say here that the act of refrigeration and 
liquefaction of air (or apparently any other gas) can 
be inverted in such a way that this very act itself will 
generate energy instead of spending it This is some- 
thing which science had not foreseen and it is based on 
principles easy to understand, but which are not men- 
tioned in the accepted laws of thermo-dynamics. 
These principles being properly applied will give us 
not merely a surplusage of energy but a totality; i. e. 
The source of energy available to draw upon is at least 
the whole difference between the temperature of solid 
air and that of the atmosphere. 

The steam engine itself is really a perpetual motion 



36 The Revelations of Nature. 

machine, provided the feeding of fuel and water is 
perpetually maintained, but the steam or other heat 
engine is made to work by running in opposition to the 
natural run of the forces of nature. This natural run 
upon the earth is for heat to disappear in proportion 
as it is supplied by the sun. My machine simply helps 
and forces this heat to disappear faster and thereby 
generates energy. 

So while a heat engine is made to do work through 
the production of heat, the cold engine will do 
work through the destruction of heat or the produc- 
tion of cold. It is a case of inversion in invention in 
the same way that an electric motor is an inverted 
dynamo, for instance : As an illustration, a heat engine 
may be compared to a floating craft forced to go up 
stream, and a cold engine to a craft carried down by 
the stream. This should give a clear notion of the 
kind and import of the discovery and invention I have 
made. This may seem incredible, but I feel satisfied 
that there is no mistake about it, and the Patent Office, 
probably for the first time in its history, has stopped 
maintaining that perpetual motion is an impossibility, 
although for obvious reasons it does not care to en- 
dorse any responsibility by expressing an opinion one 
way or the other before practical demonstrations have 



The Revelations of Nature. 37 

been made. Such opinion was once asked for and 
denied as I expected. Yet since then other applica- 
tions for patents have been made which hit the nail 
square on the head. The principles are there and the 
force is there. 

If two men are pulling on a cart trying to draw it in 
opposite directions and the men are of equal strength, 
the cart will not move, but if one of the men lets go, 
the other will have a chance to draw it, and his effort 
will be reduced by one half if the first man pushes in 
his (the second man's) direction instead of pulling in 
the opposite. This figuratively illustrates the differ- 
ence between the present methods of liquefying gases 
and my inverted method, or rather methods, for I have 
discovered more than one. The two men may be con- 
sidered as personification, one of the heat of compres- 
sion, the other of the cold of expansion, or as the poles 
of temperature. 

Another illustration will give a first notion of how 
energy can be manufactured ad infinitum. 

The absurd doctrine of the conservation of energy 
will be looked into farther. 

Something is invariable in amount, but it is not 
energy; it is the force of matter, like matter itself, 
which makes the energy. 



38 The Revelations of Nature 

We will suppose in the first place that we have one 
gallon of liquid air and any number of vessels, each 
containing one gallon and each strong enough to hold 
one gallon of liquid air enclosed within it without 
bursting after the air is brought back to the temper- 
ature of the atmosphere. We will suppose next that 
our gallon of liquid is inclosed in one of these ves- 
sels. We may remark that it will take no material 
expenditure of energy to pour the gallon of liquid into 
the vessel and to close the latter. We suppose again 
now that all the cold contained in this gallon of liquid 
can be extracted from it and transferred through the 
walls of the vessel to an equal amount of air taken at 
its normal temperature. 

At the end of the operation we will have another 
gallon of liquid air which can be bottled in turn, with- 
out expenditure of energy. 

Our first gallon of liquid will now be in the gaseous 
state and under a tremendous pressure, but the vessel 
will keep it under bounds. Following the same pro- 
ceeding, with our second gallon of liquid we can make 
a third ; with the third a fourth, and so on indefinitely, 
all without material expenditure of energy except that 
required to make our first gallon of liquid. 

After each vessel is thus filled with air will it con- 



The Revelatiofis of Nature, 39 

tain energy or not? Where did it come from? Each 
vessel will be full of air under a pressure of ten 
thousand pounds per square inch. I could prove that 
this would represent energy enough in each vessel to 
make at least two gallons of liquid air if handled the 
right way, but this would involve explanations which 
are not essential here and we may suppose that only 
one gallon of liquid air could be made with that 
energy. If we had filled say, only ten vessels, we 
would have now ten gallons of liquid or the equivalent 
in compressed air, and each gallon of liquid could make 
ten more in turn or any quantity. No magnifying 
glass is required to see what that means. The first 
gallon of liquid is truly the seed that multiplies. 

Of course we will have to provide the means for 
transferring all the cold from one volume of air to 
another and equal volume and the reader may not see 
just how this can be done, but the fact is that 
it can be done ; if it is not that exactly, it is something 
that for practical purposes amounts to the same and 
better still. 

Skeptics may not take that for granted, however. 
Very well. In any event they will no doubt agree 
that the potential energy contained within one gallon 
of liquid air is a certain determined quantity and no 



40 The Revelations of Nature. 

more or less, and that it also contains a determined 
quantity of cold which is not at all the same thing, for 
in order to make use of this energy in the usual way 
we must first remove the cold. Why then should that 
cold be wasted when it costs so much energy to get it 
by the present methods and any gas will absorb 
it avidly, thereby storing energy within itself if segre- 
gated at the same time that it is cooled and that with- 
out absorbing any of the energy contained in the con- 
fined gallon of liquid? 

One confined gallon of liquid air can liquefy by con- 
tact several gallons of ammonia gas for instance, and 
after liquefaction the latter will contain almost as 
much potential energy as the gallon of air. I defy the 
world of science to show that the latter energy is not 
created brand new. 

The amount of energy expended in making the gal- 
lon of liquid air may be several times larger than that 
contained within it and the ammonia liquefied by it 
combined, but this has nothing to do with the proposi- 
tion. Theoretically, no more energy should be ex- 
pended in making one gallon of liquid air than is con- 
tained within it after it is made, if the right process and 
perfect machine were made use of, even without the 
creation of new energy. But all the cold imparted to 



The Revelations of Nature. 41 

a gas by abstraction from a liquefied gas represents 
new energy. The question is to provide a machine 
that saves it and continues indefinitely to make more. 
That is easy enough when one way to do it is known. 

Then if energy can be thus manufactured, it can be 
destroyed. This is the natural, inevitable sequence; 
and for the same reason what can be destroyed can 
be created. Not so with the forces of matter, how- 
ever, one form of which forces is temperature. 

As far as known, a temperature, whatever its degree 
may be, is something ever present in all kinds of mat- 
ter; it is therefore indestructible, for even if tempera- 
ture could be made to disappear from matter, some- 
thing else would take its place, in consequence of which 
the saying that "there is no matter without force or 
force without matter" is true, but science has not yet 
grasped the full scope of this proposition advanced by 
itself, for it is a direct contradiction of the notion that 
perpetual motion is an impossibility. 

We have in the tides of the atmosphere and of the 
sea another example of perpetual motion, but science 
refuses to see it in this light. The tides are said to be 
caused by the attraction of the moon and the sun upon 
the earth, and according to Newton's theory, in which 
the motions of the moon and sun take place without 



42 The Revelations of Nature, 

expenditure of energy, it would follow that we have 
in the tides the justly ridiculed "something for noth- 
ing" of perpetual motion fame ; that is energy created 
permanently out of motion taking place without ex- 
penditure of it. 

In this regard Nature has shown herself inexorable 
so far, and if it were not to remain so, it could be only 
through another great discovery. No one can prove 
that such discovery will never be made, but our deduc- 
tions must remain within the bounds of actual knowl- 
edge with our limited senses of perception and reason- 
ing faculties. Infinity, for instance, is beyond the 
grasp of human intellect in its present terrestrial stage, 
and we little know what more there is. Even lower 
animals possess senses of perception we do not pos- 
sess, and since there is anything that man cannot pos- 
ibly apprehend, he should forcibly infer that he has 
not reached the highest plane in the order of intel- 
lectual beings which must necessarily people the 
boundless visible and invisible universe, and that he 
is too small to judge definitely of the unknown from 
what is known or supposed to be. There is nothing 
impossible to the Omnipotent and man is said to have 
been made to His Image, which if true would imply 
that there is nothing impossible to man, small as he is. 



The Revelations of Nature. 43 

Returning to the tides, if it is assumed that the tides 
are drawing on energy stored in the motion of the 
moon, it should not take a very long time for the 
tides to cause a marked decrease of speed in said mo- 
tion, considering the small size of the moon and the 
vast sum of energy perpetually expended in the tides, 
and this would finally bring about the fall of the moon 
upon the earth. 

Most of the bodies in the heavens being probably 
surrounded by some fluid, either liquid or gaseous, the 
perpetual independent motion of these fluids alone 
would gradually stop the motion of the universe, 
bringing together all the matter composing it. Calcu- 
lations of the heat evolved and what would happen 
if two big celestial bodies should fall upon each other 
are no doubt a harmless pastime, but such calculations 
are usually based on the assumption that the fall 
should be in a straight line, and no such direct fall 
could ever occur between bodies forming part of a 
regular solar system. The fall would take place by 
gradually drawing nearer and by shortening of the 
orbits. It does not appear that even meteorites ever 
fall upon the earth in a vertical line. 

The tidal motion of the gaseous and the liquid parts 
of celestial bodies which represents a vast expenditure 



44 The Revelations of Nature. 

of energy would in time absorb the whole energy- 
stored in the so-called centrifugal force of the universe. 
Further proof that the universe does not move with- 
out expenditure of energy will be expounded farther 
on. 



Another principle which alone would remove per- 
petual motion from the domain of the impossible may 
be described thus: It is known that different gases 
compressed together ignore the presence of each other 
as to compression, i. e., if one kind of gas, for instance, 
is under pressure in a holder, another kind of gas may 
be introduced into that same holder and the presence 
of the first gas will have no effect upon the second, 
so that the holder may contain as much of the second 
gas for attaining a given pressure as if there were noth- 
ing in the holder, and the pressure of the first gas will 
not be changed by the introduction of the second. If 
these two gases are compressed each into a separate 
holder of equal size and at even pressure, it will take 
twice as much power to compress the two gases as to 
compress one into its holder, and the potential energy 
contained in the pressure of these two gases will be 
twice that contained in one, but if the contents of the 
two holders are put into one of them, the pressure will 



The Revelations of Nature. 45 

remain the same and the potential energy shall have 
been cut in half thereby. 

Or by a more handy method, if an open communi- 
cation were established between the two holders, such 
as by means of a cock in a pipe connecting them, the 
pressure would drop to one-half, since the gas con- 
tained in each holder would expand into the other as if 
empty. If we had three or four holders with different 
gases the contained energy or pressure would drop to 
one-third or one-fourth on putting them into communi- 
cation. Yet no gas would have escaped to the outside 
and no work would have been done. (What becomes 
of the famed "conservation of energy" in this case?) 
Now this effect may be inverted, in theory at least. 
It would take no more power to compress a mixture 
of several gases than to compress one, although the 
mass of gas compressed would be different and pro- 
portional to the number of gases in the mixture. This 
is another little trick of Nature which may escape the 
notice of the casual observer. What represents energy 
is the degree of pressure, and it makes no difference 
what amount of matter produces that pressure. Now 
if we suppose that each one of the gases in the mix- 
ture could be made to do work separately, either suc- 
cessively or simultaneously, in that event each gas 



46 The Revelations of Nature. 

would turn out as much energy as was expended in 
compressing them all. Neither need it be said that 
the gases could not possibly be brought to act thus 
separately. For instance, the holder could be double 
walled, the inner wall being composed of a substance 
that would be porous enough to let one of the gases 
pass through it and not the other. Corrugations be- 
tween the two walls would permit the first gas to 
reach an outlet, and after spending all the energy of 
this gas, that of the other would still remain intact. 

Another illustration of the doubling of natural 
effects may be described as follows : If one gallon of 
coal oil is burnt in a lamp it shall have produced 
a certain amount of light and a certain amount of 
heat. As a rule the light only is utilized, but the heat 
could be transformed into light and the output of 
light thereby doubled. With gas, the use of mantles 
appears to produce another doubling effect, appar- 
ently due to incandescence. Many other examples of 
multiple effects from a single cause could be cited, 
such as that already pointed out, of the simultaneous 
generation of cold and potential energy, permitting to 
multiply energy indefinitely. The burning of fuel 
produces a chemical change in the matter involved, 
giving it different properties, and besides, this change 



The Revelations of Nature, 47 

gives us heat, light and energy. It may be assumed 
that it is by some such analogous process that certain 
cells and other formations in animal economy are mul- 
tiplied. So must be also the multiplication of seeds 
of all kinds. All of which goes to show that Nature 
is never at a loss to find abundant compensation for 
all her lavish expenditures, and that she is abundantly 
able to give "something for nothing." 



Now for the doctrine of the conservation of energy. 
What is energy? As now defined, energy is said to 
be that which can do work. It is not said to be any- 
thing else. Then when the energy has been expended 
in doing the work it can do no more, but it is still 
energy; so that energy is something which can do 
work and something which can do no work at the 
same time. This is a nice riddle for a Sphinx. The 
expended energy is usually called "irreclaimable" or 
"unavailable," but what is the difference with inability 
to do work ? There is none whatever. 

It follows that in the foregoing definition, energy 
and the force of matter or temperature are considered 
as one, which they are not. Potential energy being 
the power of causing motion, the fact is that expended 
energy and expended motion are precisely the same 



48 The Revelations of Nature. 

thing, i. e. they are nothing at all ; both have gone 
out of existence at the same time.* 

It must be remarked here that if we consider work 
and motion as identical, the useless as well as the use- 
ful work must be taken into account. If the useless 
work is not included, work and motion cease to be 
identical, for any amount of motion may take place 
without any useful work being done. By useless 
work is meant friction and similar resistances. Use- 
less work is apparently molecular in form. If a given 
amount of energy is expended in raising a given weight 
to a given height, the bulk of the energy shall have 
been only transformed in form, or transferred. What 
really absorbs or expends energy is both useful and 
useless friction and the parting or crushing of solid 
matter. Energy expended in raising a weight is not 
really expended ; it remains stored in the weight, minus 
that expended by friction, but no motion can take place 
without friction, and it is friction and the parting of 
solid matter that represents work. 

It is the change in temperature which generates new 
energy. Difference in temperatures represents the 
energy generated and temperature is ever changeable, 



*This requires qualification that will be given in the last part 
of this work, but that does not change the meaning intended here. 



The Revelations of Nature. 49 

both by rise and fall, and no loss of force ever occurs 
in the changes which take place. 

The virtue of changing temperature resides in mat- 
ter itself and constitutes its force or one form of it, 
electro-magnetism being assumed to be another form. 

That it is matter itself which possesses the power 
of changing its own temperature we see in fire ; what 
else should possess the power but matter? And if 
matter has the power of raising its own temperature 
by combustion, why not that of lowering it by some 
other process? "It is a poor rule that does not work 
both ways/' 

In this case it would be not only a poor rule, but the 
possession of the one power by matter carries with it 
the absolute necessity of an equal and opposite power. 
Otherwise, by this time the whole of the matter form- 
ing the universe would be either diffused into its 
minutest particles throughout the infinitude of space 
or agglomerated in a single solid motionless mass 
which the so-called law of gravitation in the way it 
is at present expounded could not prevent, as will be 
shown hereinafter. The law of gravitation is uni- 
versal, but it must be at the same time localized in 
each solar system and "Every particle of matter in 
the universe [does not] attract every other particle/' 



50 The Revelations of Nature. 

but only those of the solar system to which it belongs, 
and the so-called centripetal and centrifugal forces are 
only effects, not causes. 

We know with absolute certainty that matter pos- 
sesses the first just cited power — that of raising its 
own temperature by combustion, which makes it ex- 
pand and volatilize. It is therefore easy to prove that 
it must possess the opposite power, even if the fact 
were not otherwise proven. 



HEAT IS TRANSFORMED COLD. 

Since cold is transformed heat, heat must be trans- 
formed cold, and we will find that it is so, very clearly 
and indubitably so. 

When fuel is burning, some heat is evolved which 
had no actual existence before the combustion ; but 
if it had no existence as heat it had existence as some- 
thing else. What was it? The heat cannot be born 
out of nothing. It is born out of cold which holds the 
molecules of the fuel together, but which by the chem- 
ical action of combustion is transformed into heat. 
The forces of Nature are not onlv correlated, but are 



The Revelations of Nature, 51 

ever present in one form or another. Heat is present 
in the fuel in the form of cold. 

And how did the fuel originate? Was not heat an 
indispensable element to its formation? And was not 
gaseous matter transformed into solid matter in the 
same formation? The potential heat contained in fuel 
came to be stored in it by a transformation of heat 
into cold; it cannot be otherwise, for how could heat 
come out of the fuel if heat had not been absorbed in 
its formation and transformed at the same time into 
cold, thereby permitting the formation of solid out of 
gaseous matter? When the molecules or atoms of 
matter are chemically combined in some certain ways 
as they are in fuel, they remain in the solid state at 
the normal temperature, but when they combine dif- 
ferently they may or may not pass in whole or in part 
to the gaseous state. It is not more than logical to 
assume that all common kinds of fuel are derived di- 
rectly or indirectly from vegetable or animal remains, 
and no vegetable or animal species can grow without 
heat or electricity, probably both. (It is supposed 
here that electricity plays an all important part, prin- 
cipally in the growth of submarine organic life.) All 
sources of heat come directly or indirectly from the 
sun ; there can be little doubt about that, although the 



52 The Revelations of Nature. 

former natural heat of the earth may, and probably 
has, contributed largely to its store of fuel formations 
in the long past. 

Heat is not immutable, since it can have a com- 
mencement in the burning of fuel, and simple com- 
mon sense reasoning tells us that that which can have 
a commencement can have an end and vice versa ; this 
is a self-evident proposition which shows further that 
either heat or cold can be transformed the one into the 
other. It may be assumed that combustion and vege- 
table growth are opposite chemical actions. The 
vegetable kingdom is therefore a vehicle for the attrac- 
tion and transformation of heat. If this heat were not 
transformed by the absorption of the matter con- 
taining it, vegetable growth should elevate the tem- 
perature of the surrounding atmosphere, while it is 
well known that it is the opposite which takes place; 
but hitherto no particular significance seems to have 
been attached to this fact, although it is indeed very 
eloquent when the cause is understood. 

The luxuriant vegetation of tropical countries keeps 
and attracts moisture and absorbs so much heat as to 
materially lower the average temperature. On the 
other hand, in large expanses of barren ground, such 
as the Sahara Desert, the air is kept hot and dry 



The Revelations of Nature. 53 

because there is no vegetation to absorb and trans- 
form the heat. But Nature provides counterbalances 
to keep or restore her own equilibrium whenever and 
wherever it may have a tendency to be disturbed. 
We have seen before that it is not only vegetation that 
transforms heat into cold. The expansion of the air 
by the heat, which remains unabsorbed, itself trans- 
forms the heat into cold in proportion as it is supplied 
by the sun, either the expansion alone or in combina- 
tion with the winds which are bound to follow the 
expansion and mix the hot with cold air. But for this 
provision of Nature a drought in one country might 
extend over the whole of the earth and annihilate life 
upon it. The sun's heat has to be transformed in pro- 
portion as it is supplied or the earth would become 
red hot. 

At the present time it is held that void space is 
intensely cold — "the cold of interstellar space" or ab- 
solute zero. This is one more scientific absurdity 
based on the assumption that cold is nothing. Why, 
if void space were so intensely cold, any vacuum bulb 
should be almost instantly covered with frost and 
nothing could keep off the frost, such as happens with 
a vessel containing liquid air, for instance. We could 
then get permanent refrigeration in a very simple and 



54 The Revelations of Nature. 

very cheap way ; all that would be necessary being to 
get a vacuum vessel of any description. But in such 
event, all the earth, with all the atmosphere surround- 
ing it, should be frozen solid, since the atmosphere is 
supposed to be surrounded by a vacuum, and we 
would not need any more refrigeration. 

(Inasmuch as things do not happen that way, may 
be some would say that the cold is "latent" in a vacuum 
and nowhere else.) Heat and cold or else tempera- 
ture being a property of matter, it is contained by 
matter and void space could have no temperature if 
there were any such thing as absolutely void space. 

It takes matter to absorb heat or cold, and if the 
sun's heat were not transformed in proportion as it is 
received by the earth, there would be nobody to write 
this in these parts. 

THERE IS NO INERT MATTER. 

The very fact that the temperature of any and all 
kinds of matter or elements is variable is absolute 
proof that there is no "inert matter," since change of 
temperature is an effect produced in matter by matter 
itself; and this is independently of the millions of 
chemical actions and reactions which take place in 



The Revelations of Nature. 55 

matter, which bear the same indisputable evidence. 
To call matter inert when it is capable of producing 
all the innumerable chemical and physical manifesta- 
tions known and unknown, is nonsense. 

All effects or phenomena are either physical or chem- 
ical in their nature, but chemistry is in some way at 
the base of them all, either near or remotely. 

All physical and chemical effects are necessarily 
caused by motion of some kind somewhere, and there 
can be no motion without something to move. The 
motions producing the effects may be many and com- 
plex and in their complexity may cause many effects 
related with each other, but the primordial cause of 
any and all effects is motion. And any and all motion 
can have only one of two causes, or three if you will — 
repulsion or attraction, or both — molecular or atomic 
repulsion and attraction. This gives us chemistry 
and chemistry gives us the forces of Nature. 

We know with certainty of three states of matter: 
the solid, liquid and gaseous states. Sir William 
Crookes discovered a fourth, the radiant state, and 
this should forcibly be inferred by reason if it had not 
been discovered. 

There may be other still more attenuated or "spir- 
itualized" states of matter as it were, but this we do 



56 The Revelations of Nature 

not know. We do know, however, that there is a 
limit of temperature within which matter may remain 
in the solid state, as there is one in which it can remain 
in the liquid state, and there must be one for the 
gaseous state also; possibly one for radiant matter 
and any other state or states as well. The different 
limits will vary with the different kinds of matter, but 
there is one for each state of each kind. This would 
seem to imply that some kinds of matter are more 
material than others, so to speak, but this may be due 
to a condition of association or combination which is 
not permanent. Furthermore, caloric temperature is 
not the only kind of temperature which may affect 
and change the different states of matter. 

What might be termed "electric temperature" can 
do it also. Electric temperature is not caloric, or only 
weakly so. 

Matter in the gaseous state is already invisible, 
transparent and intangible. Matter in the radiant 
state must be still more perfectly so, but in addition it 
is apparently imponderable, or rather "antiponder- 
able ;" that is, its particles have ceased to attract each 
other and are now repelling each other, only lack of 
available space preventing them from getting farther 
and farther apart, so that matter in this condition has 



The Revelations of Nature 57 

no weight, but has the opposite of weight ; its property 
of attraction has been inverted or transformed to that 
of repulsion. (It is assumed here that radiant matter 
pervades all interstellar space.) In fact, without the 
existence of such a repulsive force to counteract and 
oppose that of what we call gravity, or means to create 
it, as by the burning of fuel, any and all motion would 
be an impossibility. 

Matter in the gaseous state still retains density, but 
in passing from the solid or liquid into the gaseous 
condition so much attractive force is transformed into 
repulsive that a limited opposition to gravity is 
secured, giving us what we call energy, which as we 
have seen before, can be secured also by the inverse 
operation, that is, the passing of the gaseous into the 
liquid or solid state. Opposites in forces are the male 
and female elements constituting a working whole, 
which is the life of the universe. 

Combustion is only one form of chemical action, 
and as all matter is capable of being acted upon chem- 
ically, there is evidently no inert matter, for how could 
any chemical action involving changes of properties 
take place if it were not for molecular or atomic repul- 
sions or attractions? Matter which remains solid or 
liquid remains so in virtue of the attractive force con- 



58 The Revelations of Nature 

tained in its molecules or atoms for the time being 
and could not pass into any different chemical com- 
bination unless a stronger repulsive or attractive force 
comes into play, giving to the new combination prop- 
erties that none of its elements possessed before. 

But furthermore, matter evidently contains the vital 
principles of organic life which are equally based on 
chemistry, and which necessarily bear a relation with 
the natural forces. 

Indeed we know very little about the properties of 
matter, and between what we call matter and spirit 
I venture to say there may not be so wide a gulch as 
is commonly imagined. It may be only a question of 
degree or condition where the atom or the minutest 
particle may disappear, but this, of course, is far 
beyond possible analysis, at the present time at least. 

POLES OF TEMPERATURE. 

If all matter had a unique and invariable tempera- 
ture, no matter how low or high, what we call tem- 
perature would be unknown and unknowable, as there 
would be no poles to it and no difference could ever 
be felt or indicated. A man who should have lived 
all his life without ever feeling any difference in tern- 



The Revelations of Nature 59 

perature could not realize what temperature is any- 
more than a blind born can realize what light is. 
Matter may possibly be endowed with some such un- 
changeable property or properties which we do not 
know, but only a revelation from a higher order of 
beings could make us aware of it. Assuming that tem- 
perature could exist in such condition, the same would 
not be a force since it could not generate energy as we 
understand it. Consequently one pole of any real force 
of nature cannot exist without an equal and opposite 
pole, for it is the existence of the one that makes the 
existence of the other, and the plain fact that we have 
any two different temperatures is the positive proof 
that heat and cold are its opposite poles which attract 
each other and return the one into the other until 
polarity ceases. 

If there is an absolute zero of heat which is the 
maximum of cold there must be an absolute zero of 
cold which is the maximum of heat, and those would 
be the ultimate poles of temperature. Heat could not 
exist without cold or cold without heat. What more 
proof is wanting that heat and cold are the opposite 
poles of a single force? 

For us the normal average temperature at the sur- 
face of the earth is the dividing point between heat 



60 The Revelations of Nature 

and cold. Any two different temperatures both above 
this normal, are poles of heat; if both below the nor- 
mal, they are poles of cold. Red hot iron represents 
cold if we compare it to the heat of the sun, and ice 
represents heat if we compare it to the temperature of 
liquid air. Consequently any pole or degree of temper- 
ature may be a positive or negative pole, according to 
whether the other pole is a temperature above or be- 
low that one. A similar relation must exist between 
electricity and magnetism which is abundantly indi- 
cated by the evidence at hand. Furthermore, the very 
existence of electricity and magnetism, like that of 
heat and cold, are necessarily dependent upon such a 
relation. 



The following, which is the end of a communication 
purporting to be from the beyond, and extracted from 
"The Encyclopedia of Death and Life in the Spirit 
World," by J. R. Francis, renders admirably some 
thoughts I had expressed in writing long before read- 
ing said article or anything of the kind : 

* ■. * * «j as k e( j this fair one why it was necessary 
the sexes should be united after they had passed be- 
yond the stage or sphere of procreation. What further 
use were they to each other as such? She an- 



The Revelations of Nature 61 

swered : Of what use are the two poles of a gal- 
vanic battery? Because they cannot exist separate, 
or are only in a quiescent state. The current can not 
flow unless the circuit is complete. Just so with mor- 
tals or spirits, beings of a higher order incomplete 
alone. The Bible says : 'It is not good for man (man- 
kind) to be alone/ which holds good throughout the 
spheres. If this were not the law, spirits would mingle 
together promiscuously, seemingly without a purpose 
in an inharmonious manner. While, on the other hand, 
they are similar to a fond pair on earth ; they have a 
special object to love and care for, which gives them 
an aspiration for a more exalted condition. 

There will come a time in the unfoldment of the 
spirit when they will be so strongly united that they 
will have no desire to be separated. They will be 
virtually one, 'twain of one spirit/ as you have seen in 
a former vision. 

This is in accordance with the universal law of the 
positive and negative forces of nature, which is the 
harmonizing principle throughout the universe.* In 
the earth sphere these seemingly two elements, as 
seen in the sexes, are noticeably distinct. They are 



*The mtmmmmmmL bold type in this paragraph is mine. 



52 The Revelations of Nature 

separate and independent until attracted together by 
the common law of affinity, which is only partly un- 
derstood." 

This contains food for reflection, Messrs. the savants 
materialists; what do you think of it? I hear you say 
that it is all fake and humbug, as some scientists once 
said concerning mesmerism, when they first tried to 
look into it and could find no explanation. To-day 
they could no longer deny its successor, hypnotism, 
which they could not explain any better. 

The doctrine of evolution is now established on a 
firm footing which is being constantly reinforced by 
further evidence, but it would be absurd to suppose 
that the zenith of evolution has been reached by man- 
kind or even by the intellectually most eminent of 
the race. It is not even wise to assign any limit to the 
evolutionary process. Hypnotism, telepathy, mind 
reading, clairvoyance, and all the allied phenomena 
designated as occult sciences, which have hardly 
reached the embryonic stage, are in all likelihood 
steps in the ladder humanity has to climb. This leads 
us forcibly to merge the material into the spiritual, 
which are apparently linked by metamorphoses, one 
of which is called death. 

But at present we are only concerned with what 



The Revelations of Nature 63 

man of to-day can understand— the physical laws of 
nature, as far as known, or within the scope of man's 
apprehension. 

In any event, what is ridiculed by science is often 
what offers the greatest rewards for the investigating 
mind. 

In the "American Inventor" of July 15, 1903, appears 
the following note, page 38: "The weight of a body 
increases as it grows colder, has been demonstrated 
by Professor Babcock of Wisconsin University. Pro- 
fessor Russell of the same university says of Professor 
Babcock's work : 'I believe his discovery to be fully 
as important as the Newtonian law of gravitation and 
even broader than the law of the conservation of 
energy. The exactitude and accuracy of his experi- 
ments so far, can not be questioned.' Professor Bab- 
cock perfected an apparatus for weighing and melting 
ice, and found that it lost weight in thawing. That is, 
a half ton of ice produced less than a half ton of water." 

This is actually the first direct experimental, and 
absolute proof of what has been said herein concern- 
ing the nature of cold as a force. It means more than 
that however. It is the positive proof that cold is the 
very cause of weight or one of the causes, magnetism 
being assumed to be a complimentary factor, as ex- 



64 The Revelations of Nature 

pounded in the following pages, written long before 
this announcement was made as well as the preceding 
ones. 

If cold increases weight, it does produce weight to 
the extent of the increase, and it means that increase 
of either cold or weight involves increase of the other 
or of both, and consequently that cold is at least one 
of the factors producing weight, gravity or gravitation 
in its entire manifestation, and that decrease of cold 
or increase of heat is at least one of the factors pro- 
ducing the opposite which is repulsion. 



PART II. 



FORCES OF MATTER. CELESTIAL 

MECHANISM. 

I. 

Many of the propositions hereinafter expounded are 
of a somewhat more speculative nature than those of 
the. first part, but they would not be given at all if no 
good grounds had been found to warrant their mention 
with some degree of reserve, while many other state- 
ments should be found quite as convincing to un- 
biased minds as those of the first part. It is therefore 
not expected or implied that everything said should 
prove just right, but it is expected that some measure 
of new light will be thrown upon many speculations 
of the centuries. Those more able to do so may 
develop the lead if it agrees with their own views. 

My conception of the causes and effects of the uni- 
versal machine is as follows : The universe is main- 
tained in motion and in equilibrium by the combined 
and opposite action of attractive and repulsive forces, 
through which action energy is everlastingly generated 



56 The Revelatiojis of Nature 

to keep the motion. One attractive and one repulsive 
force is meant for what is really the positive and nega- 
tive pole of a single force. 

The suns or stars and the planets are bodies which 
on the whole may be considered as being formed of 
about the same constituent elements, although there 
may be considerable variations. The physical condi- 
tion of the suns and that of the planets are diametri- 
cally opposite, representing what may be called male 
and female elements or conditions. 

The same forces are present in both conditions, 
but in an inverted way, i. e., suns are hot at the surface 
and cold at the center, the heat increasing gradually 
from the center to the surface ; while planets are 
getting colder and colder from the center to the sur- 
face. 

The principal if not the only forces are : temperature, 
whose poles are heat and cold ; and electro-magnetism, 
whose poles are electricity and magnetism ; electricity 
being transformed magnetism and magnetism trans- 
formed electricity. Heat and electricity are the re- 
pulsive forces, while cold and magnetism are the at- 
tractive forces. All other so-called forces are only 
effects of these which are based on chemistry, or the 
property of the elements of combining together in 



The Revelations of Nature 67 

many different ways, and of disintegrating from said 
combinations to enter into new ones. From these 
chemical actions physical actions are induced, one of 
which is life. The universe is an unbounded labor- 
atory and all its life and motion are derived from 
chemistry. 

The so-called force of gravitation, gravity or cen- 
tripetal force is therefore an effect of the combined 
attractive forces of cold and magnetism, while the so- 
called centrifugal force or momentum is produced or 
maintained by the repulsive forces of heat and elec- 
tricity. Electricity is assumed to be produced by a 
form or forms of combustion different from caloric 
combustion, but like the latter, is a repulsive force; 
all forms of combustion being chemical actions. 

The suns are bodies which are burning up at the 
surface, the combustion being both caloric and elec- 
tric, and the products of combustion fill the interstellar 
space with radiant matter which is absorbed by the 
planets. Space being saturated with this radiant mat- 
ter, composed of all kinds of elements, the combustion 
of the suns cannot proceed faster than the absorp- 
tion of the radiant matter by the planets. 

This radiant matter is what really fills the place of 
the mythical ether, each one of the different elements 



68 The Revelatio?is of Nature 

giving the different wave length observed in spec- 
troscopy, and each element ignoring the presence of 
the others in the same way that two or more gases 
compressed together ignore the presence of each other. 
It is the repellent force of this radiant matter which 
prevents the planets from falling into their respective 
sun, so that the planets float into it, but are at the 
same time attracted by the internal unconsumed mass 
of their respective sun which keeps them at a de- 
termined distance inversely proportional to their den- 
sity. 

This is the reason why the waves of radiant matter, 
now called ether waves, seem to travel athwart at the 
surface of the earth, said waves being strongly de- 
flected or flattened as they meet the earth, this causes 
them to spread tangentially. 

Suns are repelling each other through the radiant 
matter they emit and through that already pervading 
space, in consequence of which they move in all direc- 
tions where resistance is least with regard to each of 
them ; i. e., each sun moves in the direction of space 
where the pressure of radiant matter is least in its 
own proximity. The radiant matter itself tends to 
keep an equilibrium of pressure throughout space and 
moves toward the points of least pressure or what 



The Revelations of Nature 69 

might be called partial vacuum, as can be exemplified 
by the motions of the atmosphere, and what might be 
termed wind currents, for want of a better name, are 
probably a feature of radiant matter throughout in- 
finity. Such currents might account for the existence 
of the Milky Way. 

The radiant matter is moving circularly with each 
star, but not in a body like a solid mass. 

The speed of circular motion of radiant matter de- 
creases with the distance from the star by which it is 
emitted and with which it revolves. 

This accounts for the third law of Kepler concerning 
the speed of orbital motion of the planets. To the 
repulsive force of radiant matter combined with the 
attractive force of tangible matter is due all the regu- 
lar motions of all celestial bodies. The repulsive force 
keeping the planets at a determined distance from their 
respective sun is balanced by the attractive force of 
the planets upon the unconsumed mass of their sun, 
but there is no such compensation between stars. 

Each star being a focus of radiant matter, the en- 
counter of radiant matter emanating from different 
focuses produces eddies, currents and spirals, prin- 
cipally spirals, whose center is the focus, and these 
spirals act upon each other as spur or cog-wheels, to 



70 7 be Revelations of Nature 

give an illustration, and this imparts an axial rotation 
to the stars ; but as the repulsive force of radiant mat- 
ter decreases with the distance from its focus in conse- 
quence of being more rarefied it follows that its mo- 
tion is correspondingly less the greater the distance, 
and the average distances between focuses is so vast 
that at the greater distances the motion of radiant mat- 
ter around its focus is almost nill ; yet in proportion as 
the distance from the focus decreases, the pressure is 
increased, until at the surface of the star the repulsive 
force and pressure are such as to impart a tremendous 
speed of rotation to the focus or star. Then the radiant 
matter has to glide upon itself continually throughout 
space, changing the relative positions of its particles. 

For illustration we may suppose that the radiant 
matter is divided into any number of layers winding 
successively and spirally upon each other and that 
each convolution of the spiral moves with a different 
speed which increases as the pressure and inversely 
as the distance from the focus, the latter moving fast- 
est upon its axis, while the outer convolutions of the 
spiral are almost stationary relatively to the rotary 
motion of the focus. 

Another more or less appropriate illustration of the 
gliding of the particles of radiant matter upon them- 



The Revelations of Nature 7) 

selves whereby their circular motion decreases in speed 
as the distance from the focus increases, would be a 
comparison of the motion of the water of the sea which 
when violently agitated moves fast at the surface, yet 
remains quiet a short distance below. 

It is not necessarily essential, however, that radiant 
matter should fill all interstellar space or that the 
radiant matter from one focus should extend until it 
meets the radiant matter from other focuses. The 
attraction of gravitation takes place at a distance, and 
the repulsive action may and must take place also at a 
distance anyway as will be shown subsequently. 

The particles of radiant matter not only repel each 
other through their repulsive influence, be that what 
it may, without touching each other, but they at the 
same time repel condensed matter or matter in bulk, 
so that the repulsive force acting upon a planet is 
proportional to its surface exposed to the repulsive 
action ; the repulsive intensity decreasing with the 
distance in a proportion to be determined, the density 
of the planets determines their distance from the sun ; 
said distance increasing inversely as the density. 

The energy producing the rotary motion of a sun 
upon its axis is therefore generated by the combustion 
of that sun itself, while some radiant matter being 



72 The Revelations of Nature 

constantly absorbed by its planets permits the com- 
bustion to proceed only as. fast as radiant matter is 
absorbed and would stop with the stoppage of the 
absorption. Of course the repulsive action must pro- 
ceed from the focus; the action of the radiant matter 
on the focus being merely one of pressure and relative 
inertia. 

Inasmuch as the radiant matter is composed of all 
kinds of elements whose wave lengths vary enor- 
mously, it may be assumed that they form independent 
spirals of different curvature and different length. 

The planets absorb radiant matter through the veg- 
etable and animal kingdoms and probably in many 
other ways. Indeed, there are good reasons for 
assuming that all the earth formations are growing 
like plants and trees, but much more slowly, from the 
absorption of radiant matter. There can be little 
doubt that coral reefs are growing. These are feeding 
upon the small animals called corals and are not built 
up by them since the structure of these animals dis- 
appears in the coral formations. The seams and layers 
found in all rocky and other earth formations remind 
one of the successive layers of tree trunks, and can be 
explained only, on the assumption of secular growth. 
It is said to have been discovered that diamonds are 



The Revelations of Nature 73 

alive, and they must be at least before cutting. In 
working over gold mines after a lapse of years, miners 
are often astonished at the amount of gold left in 
former workings ; so much so that the theory has been 
advanced before that gold grows. No doubt it does, 
but the sun provides the substance. The planets are 
thus storing materials with which to aliment future 
suns, while the present suns will in turn become 
planets after consuming all their substance, minus a 
residuum of ashes, to act as nucleus for the condensa- 
tion of surrounding gases and vapors and the forma- 
tion of new planets, and so on forever. 

According to the foregoing hypothesis of the motion 
of radiant matter, the waves of light and all kinds of 
rays, which are assumed to be produced by the vari- 
ous elements composing the radiant matter, would 
travel not in a straight line, but in spiral form, and 
as a consequence the distance of the stars would be 
immensely less than is supposed, for the line of vision 
and of light waves would follow the spiral. 

For the same reason, the distance of the sun in a 
straight line would be a great deal less than it is said 
to be. 

The spiral form of motion of the radiant matter 
would give rise to the axial rotation of the planets in 



74 



The Revelations of Nature 



the same direction as that of the sun, for the solar 
rays reaching each planet would be of inequal length, 
the outer rays of the spiral, i. e., those exterior to the 
curve of the radius vector, or bundle of rays whose 
path is interrupted by a planet, being longer than the 
inner ones, and the repulsive force of the shorter rays 
stronger than that of the longer ones, would account 
for the axial rotation, as shown in the diagram below, 
the dots at the end of the lines I, 2, indicating their 
difference of length. 




The difference between the longest and the shortest 
rays of the spiral reaching on any planet would be so 
much greater that the planet itself would be greater, 
and as a consequence the bigger the planet would be 
the faster would it turn upon its axis. Here a very 



The Revelations of Nature 75 

important remark must be made bearing directly on 
this latter proposition. 

The earth, Mars and Jupiter, are about the only 
planets whose diameter and principally the duration 
of axial rotation are known with anything approach- 
ing more or less certainty and accuracy. 

Then they precisely seem to bear with each other 
a relation of the kind just described. While the 
length of the day on Mars exceeds somewhat that of 
the earth, that of Jupiter is a great deal shorter, and 
their respective diameters are found to have a very 
nearly equal relation. Thus, if the difference between 
the length of day on Mars and the earth is divided 
by the difference between that of Mars and Jupiter, 
and the same division and comparison made between 
their respective diameters there will be found the 
analogy. The coincidence is not perfect from the data 
at hand, but the discrepancy may be accounted for 
from various possible causes, the principal being that 
the atmosphere of the three planets has to be taken 
into account and that its depth on any of them is un- 
known, principally that of Jupiter, and it is also un- 
known what hold or lack of it the atmospheres would 
offer to the radiant matter. This lack of knowledge 
concerning the atmosphere of the planets alone con- 



76 The Revelations of Nature 

tains ample margin to get perfect concordance within 
acceptable limits of probability as to the extent of 
the atmospheres. 

Inasmuch as the repulsive energy of radiant matter 
decreases with the distance from the sun, the distance 
of the planets from the sun is inversely proportional 
to their density, and the energy required to keep their 
axial rotation is also inversely proportional to their 
density or distance from the sun, so that this distance 
from the sun has no influence on the speed of their 
axial rotation. 

The spiral curvature of motion of radiant matter 
may possibly commence only at a great distance from 
the sun, so that the radiant matter would turn in a 
body with the sun up to that distance. In this event 
any planet located within that distance would have 
no axial rotation, since its forward and backward 
radius vector being straight would be of equal length. 

It is assumed that the solar rays reflected by both 
the planets and their satellites act indirectly upon the 
satellites as they act directly upon the planets, and 
that it is these reflected rays which in part at least 
prevent the satellites from falling onto the planets. 
The rays reflected by the planets would also impart 
the orbital motion to their satellites. 



The Revelations of Nature 77 

This explanation may not be entirely satisfactory, 
but there is another one with which we may familiar- 
ize ourselves when we have fully realized that both 
repulsion and attraction must take place at a distance. 
All the indications are that the interior of the earth 
is intensely hot and this heat represents a repulsive 
force, but as it is so situated that its repulsive action 
is prevented from expanding the earth matter by the 
exterior forces of cold, this internal heat may act at 
a distance to keep the moon away. In this connection 
electricity and magnetism have not been mentioned, 
but it is understood that they act conjointly with heat 
and cold. 

On account of the relatively small size and distance 
of the satellites from their respective planet and the 
relatively small speed of axial rotation of the small 
planets, the satellites would fail to turn upon their 
axis, as happens with the moon ; the reason being first 
that the solar rays reflected by the earth or the repul- 
sive rays from the earth itself reach the moon in 
practically straight lines; so that rays reaching any 
two points equidistant from the center of the visible 
moon's surface are of equal length and consequently 
of equal repulsive force; and secondly, even if these 
rays were slightly curved, the moon is so small that 



78 The Revelations of Nature 

the difference in length of the rays reaching it from 
the earth or even from the sun would be insufficient 
to make it turn upon its axis ; while a slightly higher 
density or magnetic attraction on one side of the moon 
would make it present always that side to the earth. 

The radiant matter on meeting the earth would be 
in part reflected into space and in part would pass 
round the earth to meet again on the opposite side, 
but at a distance from the earth, and its encounter 
with the earth would give us the zodiacal light, while 
the shock of its meeting again, after passing round 
the earth, at a point of space opposite to the sun would 
produce the faint glow known as the Gegenschein. 
The side of the earth opposite to the sun would there- 
fore be the base of a cone having a partial vacuum of 
radiant matter, or rather that part of it shielded by 
the earth would be in a quiescent state. 

If it were not so there should be no night, as the sun 
would remain always visible, as happens in some parts 
of the earth adjacent to the polar zones where the 
midnight sun is seen, although far below the horizon. 
That is because such parts lie in the path traversed 
by sun rays round the earth before they leave it to be 
reunited in the Gegenschein, leaving the cone of 
shadow whose apex is the said Gegenschein. 



The Revelations cf Nature 79 

The motion of the earth upon its axis would be the 
cause of the zodiacal light occurring only in tropical 
latitudes on account of the higher speed of motion 
at the equator. 

Another possible cause would be the non-absorption 
in these latitudes of radiant matter of an electrical 
nature, on account of the hot air preventing its passage 
through it, but which would be absorbed more readily 
in colder latitudes, while the absorption of caloric 
radiant matter would be most pronounced at the equa- 
torial regions. While both hypotheses may be true in 
part, the former is considered more likely. 

The motion of the earth upon its axis may or should 
have a tendency to make the eastern stream or cur- 
rent of radiant matter more prominent than the west- 
ern. This is a fact fully confirmed by the recorded 
observation of zodiacal light. 

Auroras borealis must be unusual agglomerations or 
clouds of radiant matter denser than its average 
density next to the earth and expelled from the sun 
with unusual violence in solar eruptions, such clouds 
hovering towards the poles where the agitation of 
radiant matter is least, until gradually absorbed by 
the earth. 

I have long suspected that the great streamers ob- 



£0 Tk* Revelations of Nature 

served in the solar corona in eclipses of the sun are 
caused by the draft upon the radiant matter, due to 
its absorption by the planets, but have no means to 
test this hypothesis. If correct, the streamers should 
be found directed toward the planets and none should 
ever be seen at the sun's poles. 

The orbits of all the planets being more or less close 
to the plane of the ecliptic would naturally render 
accurate determinations difficult. In any event, the 
appearance of the sun as resulting from all the ob- 
servations bears unmistakable evidence that it is a 
body in combustion. 

Sun spots must consist simply of solid or liquid 
matter ejected from its interior in eruptions and which 
gradually melt away, thereby supplying new material 
to feed the fire. That is precisely what the appear- 
ance of the spots indicate; their appearance would 
vary according to the kinds of material ejected. Very 
inflammable material, such as a gas or liquid, would 
flash up and disappear, while other, solids, and not 
so inflammable, would melt first in the ocean of melted 
matter preceding the vaporous atmosphere of the sun, 
and on melting would gradually disappear also. The 
formation as well as the disappearance of the spots 
is said to be gradual. That is because the eruptions 



The Revelations of Nature 81 

which give them birth continue for some time after 
a vent has been made and until the internal pressure 
has been relieved to the point of equaling the external 
pressure, when the eruption stops. Therefore, the 
eruptions must be started by the pressure of gases or 
vapors lying below the solid surface of the sun, such 
as would occur on the earth if its surface were ablaze. 
This is probably what is to be its fate in the very, 
very remote future, when its physical conditions shall 
have been brought to a state of maturity for such oc- 
currence ; but many geological ages will elapse before 
the dust of our bodies shall be again turned into 
radiant matter, through which condition it must have 
passed alread}' millions of times. 



II. 

In order to analyze any substance by spectroscopy, 
the substance has to be held in a flame or electric 
spark. There is no necessity for an imaginary ether to 
play any part in the phenomenon evolved here. It is 
produced simply by a very minute part of the sub- 
stance passing to the radiant state on account of the 
heat imparted to it. If held long enough in the flame 



82 The Revelations of Nature 

it would all pass to the radiant state, but it might 
require many years with a flame of relatively low 
temperature. It has been found, however, that almost 
all substances disappear very rapidly in the electric 
furnace. What becomes of them? Is not this a dem- 
onstration that matter passes to the radiant state? 
Is it found in the gaseous state after disappearance? 
And if radiant matter exist at all, how is it brought to 
this state? Of course the matter brought to the radi- 
ant state in the electric furnace may be cooled again 
and absorbed in the earth, and no doubt it is, but how 
about that emitted by the sun? Since by spectral 
analysis many of the elements present on the earth 
are found to be present in the sun also, it can be in- 
ferred that their presence in the sun can be detected 
solely by their passing to the radiant state, through 
either or both caloric and electric combustion of the 
sun. 

Why should the elements forming the sun reveal 
their presence in it indirectly through such a strange 
medium as an "ether" instead of directly through 
themselves? What disposition would scientists make 
of all the radiant matter turned loose during all the 
millions of years the combustion of the sun has been 
in progress when the sun is only one of the millions 



The Revelations of Nature 83 

of stars which have been emitting radiant matter for 
countless ages? What necessity is there for an im- 
possible ether to take the place of the radiant matter 
when the latter requires so much room for itself? Is 
there any way known to science of producing perma- 
nent luminosity and heat unless combustion of some 
kind is taking place somewhere? And can combus- 
tion take place unless something is consumed? From 
the observations and appearance of the sun is it not 
clear that it is a body in combustion? These are vital 
questions, and unless they can be rationally negatived, 
our planet must be floating in radiant matter and 
the same is present throughout Infinity. The theory 
of free condensation producing heat is rather funny to 
say the least, since in our experience heat invariably 
produces expansion, and although forced condensa- 
tion, i. e., compression, will produce heat, power has 
to be expended in effecting the compression, and any 
heat produced by free condensation would immedi- 
ately stop that condensation, since the state of expan- 
sion of the matter would be due to the heat (or elec- 
tricity) it contains, and any addition to that heat 
would expand the matter further instead of permitting 
it to condense. Free condensation destroys heat in- 
stead of creating any. 



84 The Revelations of Nature 

It seems likely that the matter consumed is trans- 
formed into radiant matter where the atoms are split 
into many thousand parts and the time required to 
consume a given mass is correspondingly larger than 
in caloric combustion, which is of a grosser nature 
where the elements involved do not pass beyond the 
gaseous state. Since in caloric combustion the ele- 
ments involved do not pass beyond the gaseous state 
as far as known, if the existence of radiant matter 
is once admitted and proven, that fact alone would 
constitute strong evidence in support of the electrical 
combustion theory as just described, for the radiant 
state of matter is a natural state, and there is probably 
more matter in this state than in all the others com- 
bined, unless ponderable and imponderable matter 
equal each other in amount as the counterpart of each 
other, which is not unreasonable supposition. Very 
intense heat may probably reduce some if not all kinds 
of ponderable matter to the radiant state also, but that 
would not be as a result of its own combustion, and 
it does not appear that the physical conditions or state 
of the sun and stars are such as to permit of their 
being consumed by caloric combustion, since in the 
latter the matter involved in the combustion does not 
pass beyond the gaseous state, and this state can 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 85 

hardly be imagined as existing in the vicinity of the 
sun except under a tremendous pressure; but further- 
more the final act completing the combustion of the 
solar matter by either caloric or electric combustion 
may be considered as taking place on the planets, if 
as advanced and most likely, it is their absorption of 
radiant matter which permits the sun to burn. 



III. 



One may wonder that the repulsive and attractive 
forces moving the universe are on the whole balanced 
to such a nicety, principally in view of the fact that 
the solar activity is variable. But from that it does 
not follow that the repulsive intensity of the radiant 
matter emitted by it should vary accordingly. La- 
place is credited with saying that the length of the 
year has not changed by as much as a second in thou- 
sands of years. This is a singularly sweeping and 
hazarded assertion based upon erroneous apprehension 
of the real state of things. The fact is that we have 
positively no way of ascertaining what was the length 
of the year or day one thousand years ago. It might 



36 The Revelations of Nature 

have been one-half of what it is in our time or twice 
as long for all we know. 

And what is more, we have positively no known 
way so far of transmitting to posterity any intelligence 
of what is the exact length of our year or day. There 
may be a certain exact number of seconds in a year, 
but the seconds may be longer or shorter and we 
would have no way of knowing it. 

We divide the day into 24 parts, but if it were twice 
as long it could be divided into 24 parts as well, and 
each part divided into 60, and so forth. 

Our time pieces are all operated by the forces of 
Nature and follow in their action the increasing or de- 
creasing intensity of said forces on our planet and the 
central orb. Even changes in temperature and no 
doubt in electro-magnetism have a disturbing influence 
upon them. They are adjusted by hand to divide the 
day into a certain number of parts, no matter what 
the average length of the day may be. It does not 
appear that possible differences in the average length 
of the day of one year as compared with that of an- 
other year has ever been taken into consideration, and 
in this regard all that could be done would be only 
guess work at best, principally in view of the fact that 
the difference could be only very minute anyway. 



The Revelations of Nature 87 

The ancient means of recording time could not offer 
any more accuracy ; so that we have not even any way 
of knowing if two successive years are exactly of the 
same length. There is apparently nothing perma- 
nently stable upon which to base an exact computa- 
tion of time for all time to come. Assuming that the 
mass and volume of the earth is increasing, the oscilla- 
tions of the pendulum would be accelerated in propor- 
tion and the length of day shortened accordingly, 
while the number of oscillations in a given time as re- 
corded, would remain the same, but the real time 
would be different. In the years of greater solar 
activity the planets might be shifted further away 
from the sun, but they would move on in their orbits 
with correspondingly increased speed and our clocks 
would not detect the fact. While it is not likely that 
the average length of the year changes appreciably 
unless in very long periods of time, this cannot be 
taken as a base of absolute stability to establish or dis- 
prove other facts. 



IV. 

Another weighty proof of the repulsive action ema- 
nating from the sun is to be found in comet tails which 



8g The Revelations of Nature 

remain opposite to the sun at any point of the comet's 
course. Comets are apparently composed mainly of 
gases or more or less condensed radiant matter of vari- 
ous kinds, varying in kind and proportions with differ- 
ent comets. These agglomerations of condensed ra- 
diant matter or gases are the more expanded by the 
solar heat and electricity the more the comet ap- 
proaches the sun, and as it expands, the attractive 
force of the comet nucleus becomes less than the re- 
pulsive force emanating from the sun, so that it is 
blasted behind the comet and we behold it in the tail. 
The lighter matter is expelled first, but the heavier 
matter, which is not so easily expelled, is expanded 
also until the volume of the comet is increased to 
such an extent without increase of mass that the tre- 
mendous momentum of the comet is finally overcome 
by the ever-increasing repulsive action of the sun as 
the comet comes nearer, after which the comet is 
lanced back into space away from the sun by this 
repulsive force with a speed proportional to that of 
its coming, so that no comet can fall into the sun. 

Or if the matter of the comet itself is not expelled 
it is put into violent vibration, whirling or eddying, 
which is transmitted to the radiant matter of space, 
and the unusual perturbation of the latter renders it 



The Revelatitm §f Nature 89 

visible in the tail. Which of these two hypotheses is 
the more likely is not easy to tell, but either points to 
the existence of radiant matter in space, for what we 
can see must consist of something and something 
material. As regards the first hypothesis we cannot 
easily conceive of matter traversing hundreds of thou- 
sands of miles almost in a twinkling, as that in the tail 
of some comets would have to traverse for the tail to 
remain always opposite the sun, but radiant matter 
cannot be subject to the limitations of tangible matter 
as regards the time required to traverse a given space. 
Science is altogether unfamiliar with the radiant state 
of matter in which its properties are apparently in- 
verted and we should not be too hasty in reaching 
conclusions. In fact, what is the most probable is that 
the matter expelled from the comet does not traverse 
the whole length of the tail, but on being pushed back, 
it itself pushes back the radiant matter of space of the 
same kind and takes its place in the same way that 
the water of an impetuous stream on reaching the sea 
does not traverse the whole distance covered by the 
perceptible disturbance produced by it on the water of 
the sea. 

In any event, the spreading of the nebulosity around 
the new star in Perseus and the motion of certain 



90 The Revelations of Nature 

patches in it, which has been found to occur with a 
speed which may approach if not equal that of light 
gives us an illustration of the speed of motion of radi- 
ant matter. This nebulosity around Nova Persei will 
disappear completely when the radiant matter of 
which it is composed shall have reached its normal 
state of equilibrium around the new star. 

The sudden appearance of this and of all other new 
stars is generally attributed to a collision of some 
kind between dark bodies, but while collisions may 
be one way to end a world and cause its re-birth, it is 
an unnatural way in that it is in the form of an acci- 
dent, and there must be some other way in Nature for 
accomplishing the same end normally. 

We may suppose, for instance, that when a planet 
has lived long enough the planet life, its atmosphere 
has accumulated elements which make it inflammable, 
electrically or otherwise. 

A sideral match in the form of a meteorite falling 
on the planet or the spark of thunder would start the 
conflagration. The cold at the surface of the planet 
being thereby transformed into heat, the internal heat 
of the planet might cause an explosion of the whole 
planet which would transform the internal heat into 
cold, and the birth of a new star would be an accom- 



The Revelations of Nature 91 

plished fact. The absence of a vivifying sun or the 
passage of a planet through a vacuum of radiant mat- 
ter might also cause its explosion, which would fill the 
vacuum. 

It looks as if the curvature of comet tails were 
varying with the speed at which comets move toward 
and away from the sun, the curvature decreasing with 
the speed. This could be accounted for from the 
spiral motion of the radiant matter of space. The 
matter ejected from the comet being too light to re- 
main in the medium surrounding it, said matter would 
naturally follow the shortest path to get out of a 
sphere that does not belong to it; yet if the comet 
were motionless this would give time to the matter 
ejected from it to be carried more or less in the direc- 
tion of the motion of the matter of space, but the 
comet itself being in rapid motion, the repulsive action 
imparted to it is instantly transmitted behind in a line 
which is the more nearly straight as the motion of 
the comet is the fastest. 

Comets alone would disprove the accuracy of the 
law of gravitation as it is expounded, for they must 
be governed by the same laws which govern the mo- 
tions of the planets, yet many of them which come 
from and go back into the Infinite, never to return, 



92 The Revelations of Nature 

pass quite close to the sun without falling into it. 
What is the force which prevents their fall after an- 
swering the sun's call from afar if it does not emanate 
from the sun itself? 

And besides what would make them go away never 
to return after coming so near the sun? 

These wanderers which have ever been puzzling 
astronomers are yet the bearers of important revela- 
tions. 

It may be assumed that the cause of the elliptical 
form of orbit of the planets is the same as that of the 
parabolic form of orbit of the periodic comets, both 
being due to more or less oscillation between the 
attractive and repulsive forces. This would imply 
that the atmosphere of the planets may offer some de- 
gree of hold to the repulsive action of radiant matter. 
The latter assumption is borne out further by the phe- 
nomena observed in wireless telegraphy, which is 
effected simply through impulses imparted to the 
radiant matter of space with so much more efficiency 
as they are imparted at a higher elevation, and most 
electrical phenomena indicate the same thing. 

The alternate increase and decrease in volume of 
the planets' atmospheres would cause their variation 
of distance from the sun, while the atmosphere of 



The Revelations of Nature 93 

comets being immensely larger than that of planets, 
their oscillation in distance is correspondingly larger. 
It is likely, however, that the interference offered 
by the atmosphere of the earth to the impulses of 
radiant matter in wireless telegraphy does not extend 
to all kinds of it or not to the same extent for all 
kinds. The matter with the longest waves should 
prove to be the least interfered with and the one trans- 
mitting the impulses to the greatest distances, which 
might extend as far as a planet. I suggest to try to 
create the impulses by holding and withdrawing alter- 
nately any one of the elements in an electric flame or 
furnace, and testing all the elements in the same way. 



V. 

It follows from the foregoing that light would be 
produced by the wave motion of radiant matter, and 
said motion produced by combustion of some kind 
somewhere, while a shield of solid, opaque matter 
would stop the transmission of undulation of the light- 
giving elements of the radiant matter, thereby pro- 
ducing shadows. 

Light is of two kinds, one being produced by caloric 
and the other by electric combustion, and they prob- 
ably impart a wave motion to different elements of 



94 The Revelations of Nature 

the radiant matter. Electricity is apparently produced 
by a whirling motion of the same radiant matter. 
Stop this whirling motion and it will be transformed 
into waves or other forms of motion giving us light 
or heat or both. 

Visible bodies are necessarily concerned in the effect 
of illumination and consequently in the production of 
light itself, i. e. the conjoint action of radiant and of 
tangible matter is what produces light ; neither radiant 
nor tangible matter could produce light by itself alone 
unless coming into collision with itself. Of course, 
what has no existence cannot be visible, but all 
tangible matter having existence in itself plays a part 
in its visibility, in its color and in light, though dull 
black is negative to the light effect, because it absorbs 
all kinds of radiant matter and therefore all kinds of 
light, or rather does not lend itself to produce the 
latter on account of this absorption. 

Whether the apparent differences in kind of matter, 
giving us different colors, is a real difference in kind 
or the effect of a difference in speed or amplitude of 
motion, or to a difference of division of the particles 
or to any other cause need not be discussed here. The 
apparent difference exists and there is a cause for it, 
but we know not what it is. For the present it may be 



The Revelations of 'Nature 95 

assumed that the apparent differences in kind is real 
since it produces real effects anyway. As to what 
matter is, we know it is the thing that moves, that is 
all; it is the lever, the fulcrum, and the whole uni- 
versal self-acting machine in all its manifold and mul- 
titudinous functions. 



VI. 

"Every particle of matter in the universe attracts 
every other particle with a force varying directly as 
the masses, and inversely as the square of the dis- 
tances." 

"Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uni- 
form motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is 
compelled by force to change that state." 

When the latter of these two laws is considered in 
relation with the motive of the universe, the two are 
precisely the negation of each other. 

If every particle of matter in the universe attracts 
every other particle, such attraction represents a force 
acting ceaselessly, and there could be no such thing 
as a state of uniform motion of matter without this 
force acting ceaselessly upon it, and the same force 
would bring about rest if not opposed. The sole virtue 
of attraction alone would be to produce motion until 



96 The Revelations of Nature 

all the matter forming the universe had united in a 
single mass, after which further motion would stop. 

Attraction is produced by real forces, and unless 
there is some other real force opposite to that of at- 
traction, the uniting- of all matter in a single mass 
would necessarily and inevitably follow. 

On the other hand, if there was a permanent state 
of rest of matter separated in different bodies away 
from each other, attraction would have stopped or 
should not exist, otherwise they could not stay at rest 
until united ; so that attraction acting alone as an effect 
of force would not permit matter to remain in a per- 
manent state of motion, and a permanent state of rest 
of divided matter could not exist in the divided state 
with the forces producing attraction acting alone up- 
on it. 

Now it is necessary to distinguish between a real 
force and an effect of force. Motion for instance is an 
effect of force but is not a force in itself. The same 
may be said of the so-called centrifugal force or mo- 
mentum. It requires expenditure of energy to produce 
it, and the effect acts only upon the mass of matter to 
which it is imparted for a limited space of time, i. e., 
the effect can be created and destroyed and conse- 
quently can have a commencement and an end. At- 



The Revelations of Nature 97 

traction, however, is manifestly a permanent property 
of matter which cannot be destroyed (except by in- 
version) whatever the force or forces producing it may 
be. Consequently centrifugal force is utterly unable 
to be the counterpart of attraction except in a limited 
sense, and there must be some real force to produce 
and maintain it. But even if for the sake of argu- 
ment we assume that centrifugal force is in itself the 
counterpart of the forces producing attraction, we will 
see that their united and opposite action would abso- 
lutely fail to account for the permanent motion of 
the universe. 

It is admitted and well proven that there is mutual 
attraction between all the bodies of the solar system ; 
this is not open to question, but that there is the same 
attraction between the sun and the stars is another 
question ; the hvpothesis is purely speculative and 
there is not the least proof or indication of its accuracy, 
but rather the opposite. As it does not appear that 
all the stars are moving around one common center 
with orbits successively larger and larger, their mutual 
attraction should start a motion of the many distinct 
solar systems toward each other which could not be 
prevented by a centrifugal force originally imparted 
once for all to each individual member of each sys- 



98 The Revelations of Nature 

tern, as this centrifugal force would have reference 
only to one system and not to all. These solar sys- 
tems getting closer and closer would finally bring the 
universe to a heap of ruins. Besides what would pre- 
vent the planets of any solar system from gradually 
getting nearer to each other until they had combined 
their mass, momentum and distance from their sun, 
since they exert disturbing influences upon each other 
in their movements? The effect of such disturbances 
would be permanent if nothing prevented it. That is r 
the orbits of the planets would gradually equalize, the 
smaller orbits being increased and the larger dimin- 
ished, and the inevitable would necessarily follow. 
With mutual attraction they would not follow in- 
definitely the same path without uniting in one single 
mass. 

Even if all the stars were moving around one com- 
mon center on orbits successively larger for each suc- 
cessive star, or disposed in any number of groups or 
systems moving around one common center, there 
would be nothing to prevent this same amalgamation 
of their elements of motion. Groups of bodies would 
combine in a single body, then groups of larger bodies 
would be formed which would combine again, and so 
forth, until unity was reached. 



The Revelations of Nature 99 

The physical state of the sun is different from that 
of the planets and its action upon the planets must be 
different from that of a planet upon another ; its action 
upon another star must also be different from its 
action upon a planet. 

The natural opposite of attraction is repulsion, and 
since "for every action there is an equal and opposite 
reaction," why then has repulsion been left out and 
something else substituted for explaining the mechan- 
ism of the heavens, which has not been explained at 
all thereby? And why is heat ignored in the same 
explanation, since we know it to diffuse matter and is 
therefore a repulsive force? Why should heat gene- 
rate energy creating motion in our hands and remain 
impotent for the same purpose in Nature? What 
we can do with the forces of Nature by artificial means 
on a small scale can be but an imitation of what such 
forces are doing in their own way on a grand scale. 
Man has to disturb some minute fraction of said forces 
from their channels to make them serve his purposes. 
Heat being evidently a repulsive force, since it diffuses 
matter, the opposite of heat is cold, and cold is neces- 
sarily a force of attraction. Then here is in part the 
cause of gravitation. Cold as well as heat being con- 
tained in matter, when heat is transformed into cold 

L. of 3. 



100 Tbe Revelatio?u of Nature 

there must be condensation of matter and therefore 
absorption. 

There can be no motion of celestial bodies without 
expenditure of energy as in Newton's theory because 
there can be no motion which would not meet with the 
resistance of attraction or its derivatives and the sun 
would be spending its heat energy without producing 
any effect upon its own motion or that of the planets, 
and while this energy would go to waste we find noth- 
ing to answer the same purpose, so that the only real 
forces of Nature would have nothing to do with the 
motion of the universe. 

If celestial bodies require an expenditure of energy 
to keep them in motion, the forces of Nature must 
necessarily be constantly passing from one form into 
another without becoming unavaiable for generating 
energy, or the world as a whole would come to a stop 
sooner or later. 

Is there any indication that it will ever do so? Such 
an assumption is opposed to sound reasoning, as far 
as natural causes are concerned, but that would be 
the inevitable consequence by the accepted theories. 
Even if the world could move without expenditure of 
energy the original starting of the motion would re- 
main to be explained, since attraction alone could not 



The Revelations sf Nature 101 

account for it. The notion of a world's creation at 
some period of time and future end at some other 
period may be at the base of accepted theories, but we 
must find in Nature itself all the causes and effects we 
perceive and it will always furnish the explanation if' 
we look for it in the right direction. 



VII. 

It does not appear that geologists have ever at- 
tempted to give us a logical explanation of how all the 
geological strata forming the earth crust have come 
to be formed from bottom up and where the materials 
to form them that way came from. All the imagin- 
able upsettings of the earth crust could never account 
for them, and there has been no such upsetting to any 
very great extent but principally setting down. If 
the successive formation of geological strata had 
taken place from the surface down, as the admitted 
theory of the formation of the earth crust would lead 
one to suppose they should have done, then the ma- 
terial to form them would have been in the earth itself, 
but that is not the case. If they had been formed only 
by successive leveling of materials at different alti- 



102 The Revelations of Nature 

tudes, the same materials would have been worked 
over and over again without ever increasing the mass 
forming the upper layers of the crust. Geological 
data is hardly of a nature to confirm this condition. 
There is ample evidence of the secular increment of 
the earth crust as a whole even within the time cover- 
ing the known history of man. The ruins of ancient 
cities and monuments are about all found deep below 
the surface of the ground, while implements of primi- 
tive man are often found a great deal deeper. The 
disappearance below the surface of things that once 
existed in ancient times at the surface seems to be 
general. It will not be difficult to find many other 
indications that the greater part of the earth crust 
is of cosmical origin, apart from its accessions of 
falling bodies, most of which are gaseous. 

There are abundant evidences that certain regions 
of the earth now in the temperate zones have re- 
peatedly been lying in the polar zones and that the 
present polar zones have been considerably warmer 
in times long gone by. 

Hitherto no truly satisfactory explanation has been 
found for this fact. But if we assume that through the 
tropical vegetation radiant matter is absorbed faster 
than in the colder latitudes, this would tend to alter 



The Revelations of Nature 103 

the form of the earth and could easily account for the 
secular displacement of the continents, oceans and 
earth zones ; so that in time all the points on the earth 
surface could have successively passed through all 
latitudes. The earth at the equator is not round but 
elliptic. Now this is precisely as it should be if circu- 
lar belts of matter accumulate successively round its 
center at an angle to each other. 

Such belts being formed at an angle to each other 
around the center of the earth would have to cross 
each other at two points, forming two prominences. 
These prominences would increase in size with the 
number of belts crossing at the same points; but too 
great an increase in the size of the prominences would 
cause them to be shifted aside by the force impelling 
the earth to turn round an axis and subsequent belts 
would not cross at the same points. The unequal ab- 
sorption of matter round the earth is here compared 
to belts for convenience of illustration. 

The solid materials of the earth crust being heavier 
than water, the accumulation of such materials on the 
continents would cause them to sink gradually, while 
areas covered by water would gradually rise, thereby 
producing the secular displacement of surfaces covered 
and uncovered bv water. Evidences of former subma- 



}Q4 The Revelations of Nature 

rine life in all parts of the continents, even at great 
altitudes, can be accounted for only in this way. 

It may fairly be assumed that the present average 
temperature and conditions of life at the surface of the 
earth are not what they have been in former times, 
but each geological epoch produced animal and vege- 
table forms and species whose organism was adapted 
to the conditions then prevailing. Species now extinct 
could not live in our day nor could those of our day 
have lived at a very remote period of time without 
gradual adaptation to the different conditions in either 
case; hence the evolutionary process is primarily pro- 
duced by a change of conditions, and as change of con- 
ditions sroes on so does evolution. 



VIII. 

The fact that it is only the surface of bodies in space 
and the space surrounding them up to a certain dis- 
tance that are illuminated by sunlight while the space 
at large is not, is a conclusive proof that the bodies 
themselves play a part in the effect of illumination. 
This part is clearly that of arresting the sun rays, 
whatever they may be composed of, and from this 



The Revelations of Nature 105 

stoppage results a peculiar motion which produces the 
effect of light. This would remain true if light were 
propagated through the medium of ether instead of 
radiant matter. 

The result of the stoppage is a continuous series of 
shocks or pulsations which produce transverse waves 
and the waves produce the light. 

This wave motion of the radiant matter is imparted 
at the surface of bodies by the impact of radiant mat- 
ter against them and does not take place in space at 
large ; that is why space at large is not luminous. The 
white foam produced by water rushing against a cliff 
is at once an illustration and an imitation of what takes 
place with the radiant matter in producing light. For 
that reason, a lamp reflector, for instance, does not 
merely reflect the light, but actually multiplies the 
amount of it, principally a silvered glass reflector, and 
this can be easily demonstrated. Have a light of a 
given candle power in the center of a room covered all 
around with black draperies, and have the same light 
in the same room covered all around with mirrors and 
see the difference in the intensity of the light. In the 
first case we will see little more than the burning light 
with a dim glow, while in the second the room will be 
brightly illuminated; a great deal more so than it 



106 The Revelations of Nature 

would be in the ordinary conditions of a room with the 
same light. 

If the earth had no atmosphere and its whole surface 
were covered with lamp black, it would be about invis- 
ible in space and its side turned toward the sun would 
remain in darkness almost if not quite as much as the 
opposite. This at least is what must be inferred from 
the known behavior of light. Since all bodies in equal 
conditions for illumination are not equally bright, their 
brightness or lack of it is necessarily due to their own 
nature or condition which is accountable for the light 
effect or lack of it; and here again it is necessarily a 
case of attraction and absorption or of repulsion of 
rsomething, and the "ether" can have nothing to do 
with it, for ether waves should act the same way on 
all bodies and would produce no difference in colors 
or degree of brightness. The repulsive action or stop- 
page is what produces the light or the foam of radiant 
matter. 

According to this theory, those who pretend to have 
observed zodiacal light on the moon must be right. 
All the planets and satellites must have zodiacal light 
and Gegenschein, more or less according to size and 
distance from the sun. 

If these views are correct, artificial light is not pro- 



The Revelations of Nature 107 

duced by the motion of the oxygen or that of the 
molecules of fuel carried away by it, but would be pro- 
duced by the repulsive action of combustion acting up- 
on the radiant matter of space ; or some matter would 
be turned to the radiant state through the act of com- 
bustion itself. This latter hypothesis may contain the 
true explanation of the effect of gas mantles, which 
would be an increase in the percentage of gas turned 
to the radiant state, on account of the incandescence 
of the mantle. Otherwise the substance of the mantle 
itself may possibly emit radiant matter. 

The reason for making these remarks is that arti- 
ficial as well as natural or sun light produces motion 
of the gyroscope vanes which are enclosed in a vacuum 
bulb, and consequently the motion of gaseous bodies 
outside of the bulb could not reach them. Neither 
could the black side of the vanes absorb gas as it ab- 
sorbs radiant matter which is the cause of their mo- 
tion. Besides the artificial light effect itself should 
not penetrate into a vacuum bulb if directly dependent 
upon caloric combustion. I entertain some doubts that 
even sound is propagated through air waves, though 
air would interfere with its propagation. 

Hitherto it has been assumed that light is propa- 
gated through space at an even rate of speed, what- 



108 The Revelations of Nature 

ever the distance of the focus from which it is emitted 
and whatever the intensity of emission may be. With- 
out arguing that it is not so, I would at least suggest 
that it may not be so unless there is positive evidence 
to that effect. The angular velocity of radiant matter 
around the sun decreases with the distance from the 
sun, as indicated by the varying speed of planets on 
their orbits and a similar slackening of speed might 
incidentally be found in light. The speed of the elec- 
tric current itself is variable. 

It is easy to understand on mechanical principles 
a transverse wave motion with the light effect out of 
elastic radiant matter possessing repulsive energy 
whose repulsive action is resisted, but when it comes 
to applying the same reasoning to something of the 
description of ether, the only light to be found out is 
darkness. With the ether and the present theory of 
gravitation, the ether could not, would not have to, 
and should not produce any repulsive action. Then 
why in the first place does it not illuminate space at 
large as well as the surface of bodies? What would 
cause its waves to be transverse? How could it have 
so many different lengths of undulation, being all of 
one kind? How could it undulate at all and be elastic 
if it fills all space without a single point where it is 



The Revelations of Nature 109 

not present, and besides is immaterial? Or if material 
it should fill all space ; what kind of matter could that 
be that offers no resistance to the motion of other 
bodies? How could undulation be imparted to it at 
all if it offers no resistance to motion and nothing has 
any hold upon it? 

If anything could have any hold up it, then it would 
offer resistance to the motion of celestial bodies and 
stop that motion if Newton's theory is correct. If 
nothing can have any hold upon it, how can it be in- 
volved in any electrical phenomena? How could its 
undulations represented by light impart the rotary 
motion to the gyroscope which represents expenditure 
of energy? 

If it has weight, no matter how minute, then it is 
material ; it would possess attraction for itself and for 
other bodies and would offer resistance to their mo- 
tion. All its properties or virtues would have to be 
antagonistic and it bears its own stamp, that of fabu- 
lous entity born from necessity of the moment. 



110 The Revelations of Nature 



IX. 



Light, electricity and magnetism are not themselves 
material any more than heat or cold, but all of these 
effects are produced by matter all the same, and the 
only conceivable way that matter can produce them is 
by motion of its particles ; though cold and magnetism 
may be produced by a lack of such motion, or at least 
by a reduction of its amplitude ; but besides when a 
certain degree of cold or magnetism is reached, there 
is propably a collapse in the form of motion whereby 
the latter is modified, such as at the point of liquefac- 
tion of a gas for cold. At such a point for magnetism 
the radiant matter would be absorbed by solid matter 
with a tendency to resume the radiant state when arti- 
ficially produced. The particles of radiant matter have 
probably a rotary as well as a vortex motion. 

The difference between heat and electricity may be 
due to one of four causes: Either the elements pro- 
ducing them are different or the state of division of the 
elements involved in either case^ is different and the 
speed or the form of motion may be different. Caloric 
combustion being provisionally assumed to be of a 
coarser nature than electric combustion, in the former 



The Revektitns $f Nature \ \ \ 

the motion of the particles producing heat would be 
molecular or atomic, and in the latter the particles 
would be divisions of atoms. 

The difference in the two kinds of light would also 
be due to the same cause. 

A charge of potential electricity, such as that stored 
in a leyden jar or any other insulated body, must be 
simply a charge of radiant matter of some kind or 
kinds which for the time being remains in a quiescent 
state, but which commences to whirl at the point of 
escape the moment an outlet is provided for it. That 
is why a person charged with electricity experiences 
a prick at the point of contact when touched, but feels 
nothing so long as the charge is undisturbed, and it is 
the whirling or vortex motion of. the charge which 
constitutes the electricity proper, in any event the 
prime mover in all forms of motion of the particles of 
matter is to be traced to some form of chemical action 
or combustion, directly or indirectly. 

The great Nicola Tesla is reported as saying: "Elec- 
tricity is as material as this table." Undoubtedly some 
matter is involved in all electric phenomena, but it is 
not the matter involved that is the electricity proper; 
it is the peculiar motion of that matter. Just as heat 
is a form of motion so is electricity, and both produce 



112 The Revelations of Nature 

a repulsive action at a distance between the particles 
of matter involved. 

Positive charges would consist of condensed radiant 
matter whose repulsive action at a distance would be 
proportional to the degree of condensation or pressure, 
we might say. 

This increased repulsive action of radiant matter 
under confinement would give birth to negative 
charges by driving adjacent radiant matter of space 
down into the earth. The charge of radiant matter 
would be retained under bounds by the insulator, but 
its repulsive action would not be so confined. 

The whirling or other motion of radiant matter in 
space is probably the reason why it is absolutely invis- 
ible and transparent through any extent of it. Even 
the spokes of a wheel rotating very rapidly are ren- 
dered almost invisible and transparent thereby, and 
this is probably a good analogy of cause and effect. 
The radiant matter remains invisible so long as its 
natural whirling motion is not disturbed, but when it 
is sufficiently disturbed on a large enough scale be- 
comes visible as in zodiacal light, comet tails, and pos- 
sibly in nebulae. 



The Revelations of Nature \ \ 3 



X. 



It is held in electrical science that when an elec- 
trical impulse is sent through a wire the impulse does 
not travel at the surface but is transmitted through 
the substance of the wire. This implies that either a 
peculiar motion or vibration is imparted to all the 
particles of matter forming the wire or to something 
else that would be interposed between said particles. 
Of the two suppositions, the first is by far the more 
likely, and it may seem strange only because we know 
so very little about the properties of matter and its 
modes of action in its minutest divisions. We wonder 
at the phenomena with which we are not familiar; yet 
what is more wonderful than fire, w T hich we can start 
and stop ; where w T e actually see "inert matter" actively 
and freely in action by itself in the leaping flames ; 
where some matter vanishes from our sight, giving us 
light to see the disappearance, and at the same time 
may transform the condition of all kinds of bodies as 
with a magic wand? 

Electrical phenomena are found more wonderful 
than caloric phenomena solely because they are less 
familiar and less understood. 

That all the particles of matter in a wire one thou- 



1 1 4 The Revelations ef Nature 

sand or ten thousand miles long should be concerned 
in transmitting an impulse imparted at one end of the 
wire is not more inadmissible than that an impulse 
started from the sun should be transmitted to the 
earth in a few minutes through a beam of radiant 
matter at least 93 million miles long. If the medium 
of transmission were the ether the fact would not 
be any less surprising, but a great deal less compre- 
hensible. Then if the accuracy of the transmission of 
impulses through the particles of either solid or radiant 
matter were once demonstrated, the demonstration 
in either case would almost apply to both. If it were 
the ether instead of the substance of the wire itself 
that was concerned in the transmission of electrical 
impulses, what would prevent such impulses being 
transmitted indifferently through any kind of metal, 
through glass or silk or any other kind of matter, since 
the ether is assumed to inter-penetrate the molecules 
of all substances? Surely the ether is not in it here. 
The fact that a small wire transmits electrical im- 
pulses quicker than a large one is incontestable proof 
that it is the substance of the w r ire itself which is 
concerned in the transmission, because the small wire 
contains less particles of metal to move than the large 
one and the energy of the impulse not being so much 



The Revelations of Nature ] 15 

divided reaches the other end faster. The same rea- 
soning cannot apply to the ether if it is not composed 
of particles. The ether in its assumed nature or char- 
acter would utterly fail further to account for charges 
of electricity. Such charges cannot be ether, ether 
waves, or any other form of ether motion; and since 
the charges must consist of something else, that some- 
thing alone can account for all electrical phenomena, 
and we may as well dismiss the ether altogether. 

It is probable that the bodies called elements are 
not the real elements but that each is composed of as 
many elements as there are bright lines in its spec- 
trum, which may or may not themselves represent the 
ultimate elements. If they do not, a sufficient rise in 
temperature should change the appearance of the spec- 
trum, which is what actually takes place. 

The sparks spurting out from the end of the brushes 
of a dynamo and the sparks produced by striking a 
piece of flint with a piece of steel, or by sharpening a 
tool on a dry grind stone and in many other ways are 
likely to 'be produced by the same cause, namely, a 
swift whirling motion imparted to minute particles of 
either or both bodies submitted to friction, whereby 
said particles would pass to the radiant state. If cor- 
rect, this would give definitely the explanation of 



1 16 The Revelations of Nature 

the nature of electricity. It appears that friction of 
one kind or another is an invariable condition in all 
methods of generating electricity when the same is not 
generated directly by chemical action, and the elec- 
tricity would be born at the point where the friction 
takes place, the substance submitted to friction sup- 
plying radiant matter. This is necessarily the case 
if the sparks from all sources are of an electric nature, 
which they must be; but even if they were not, the 
difference would be only in kind and not in the pri- 
mordial cause or principle involved for their produc- 
tion. Such sparks surely have nothing to do with the 
ether. 

Two hard bodies come in violent contact, the vio- 
lence of the shock being due to their hardness, be- 
cause there is no yielding or elasticity in the substance 
of either body ; yet if there is anything at all that can 
yield in either or both bodies, it will yield. The only 
thing in this case that can yield consists of the par- 
ticles of matter lying at the surface of the two bodies 
where they come in contact, and it must be these 
particles which fly off and produce the sparks. The 
shock of the two bodies being a sliding one, it is just 
what is required to impart a rotary or whirling mo- 
tion to the particles of matter coming in collision. 



The Revelations of Nature ) \j 

The striking of a piece of steel and other hard bodies 
with a hammer will also produce sparks. 

It is easy to conceive that the shock may produce 
a sliding of the particles receiving the blow directly, 
and this sliding of particles upon other particles will 
cause them to whirl also, specially if rounded or spher- 
ical. Those particles which cannot fly off because they 
are not at the surface are also brought into some sort 
of vibration by the shock, and this subdued vibration 
takes the form of heat, which is gradually divided be- 
tween all the particles in the mass; but the particles 
which produce the sparks pass to the radiant state. 
Their colliding or their moving confusedly in a nar- 
row space produces a spark which spreads them in all 
directions and effects their final division as if by ex- 
plosion. 

It may be supposed that the combined amount of 
whirling motion imparted to all the particles of metal 
in all the wire convolutions in the armature of a dyna- 
mo is transferred to detached particles of radiant mat- 
ter, which are thereby made themselves to whirl, and 
thus generate electricity. 

Special import is attached to this theory of the 
transferrence of motion fram solid to radiant matter, 
in which motion of solid matter would be transformed 



1 18 The Revelations of Nature 

into repulsive action of radiant matter. The radiant 
matter involved in generating electricity through a 
dynamo would be detached by the friction of the 
brushes as said before, and this would be a transforma- 
tion of magnetism into electricity. The number of 
wire convolutions in the armature would probably 
bear a relation with the surfaces of friction affecting 
the voltage. By increasing the frictional areas and the 
pressure of the brushes for a given number of wire 
convolutions in the armature more radiant matter 
would be produced, but the whirling motion of each 
particle would not be so rapid or so extensive. The 
opposite would be the case if the number of wire con- 
volutions were increased instead. 

All electrical and electro-magnetic phenomena must 
be produced in some way by transformations of elec- 
tricity into magnetism or of magnetism into elec- 
tricity, which means transformations of radiant into 
tangible matter or of tangible into radiant matter. 



XL 

According to Camille Flammarion, (Astronomie 
Populaire, page 303), the number of atoms of metal in 



The Revelations of Nature \ \ 9 

a pin's head is estimated at eight sextillions (8.000,000,- 
000,000,000,000,000) . 

If a sand mountain having that number of grains of 
sand had to be removed and a man were to remove 
it at the rate of one thousand million grains per second, 
working day and night without interruption, his job 
would last two hundred and fifty thousand years 1 If 
Adam were still living he would be a baby as com- 
pared with the age of this man on completing his task. 
Yet recent investigations indicate that the atom is 
far from representing the ultimate divisibility of mat- 
ter. Even the radiant state is not likely to represent 
its ultimate division. These are considerations which 
it is absolutely essential never to lose sight of in ana- 
lyzing the operations of radiant matter, whether under 
the process of its absorption or emission, and shows 
us how little solid matter is required to develop an 
immense quantity of radiant matter and electricity. 
Then matter would be brought to the radiant state 
not only directly by combustion, but also indirectly 
by friction, and the same thing obtains with heat, 
which is one more point of analogy. 

It would appear also that good and bad conductors 
of electricity bear more or less the same relation to 
heat. The fact, however, that the propagation of heat 



120 The Revelations of Nature 

through bodies is so slow as compared with electricity 
may be due to one of two causes, or even both. One 
possible cause mentioned before would be a difference 
in the form of molecular or atomic motion, which itself 
could be due to a difference of form in the molecule 
or atom, and another possible cause not yet mentioned 
could be due to heat being of a coarser nature than 
electricity, if as suggested caloric combustion is of a 
coarser nature than electric combustion. 

That this is the case is the logical conclusion to 
be drawn if the splitting up of atoms takes place in 
electric combustion while it does not in caloric com- 
bustion in which matter does not pass beyond the 
gaseous state while the radiant state is involved in 
electric combustion. The very small amount of 
tangible matter involved as such in the generation of 
electricity, whether by direct combustion in a batter,y 
or by friction, would apparently be the cause that elec- 
tricity has remained so long a mystery. 

The points of resemblance between heat and elec- 
tricity are indeed too numerous to be dismissed as 
mere coincidences, and having so much resemblance, 
they must be produced by similarity of causes. 

Primarily there are only two known ways of gene- 



The Revelations of 'Nature 121 

rating energy by chemical action. One of them is the 
chemical action of caloric combustion. 

Therefore, chemical actions generating electricity 
must be considered forms of electric combustion. 

It is quite likely that there is in Nature some great 
principle yet undiscovered for generating electricity 
directly by chemical action, which would make elec- 
tricity more than a rival for heat in most of its uses, 
but it is no doubt a mistake to consider coal as the 
element most likely to provide the electrical fuel. 
Probably every element in Nature could be involved 
in combustion of one kind or another if the proper con- 
ditions were known. The many explosive compounds 
discovered in recent times point to many other dis- 
coveries of the same nature to be made in the future. 

New reversed explosions, such as that producing the 
chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen to 
form water may also be discovered. 



XII. 

A few more words concerning the ether. If the 
ether permeates the molecules of all bodies and moves 



122 The Revelations of Nature 

freely through them it is not easy to see how it could 
be confined and put under stress. 

If electricity consisted of ether or of any form of 
ether motion we find that the same would have to 
be propagated almost instantly through the substance 
of a long telegraph wire, while a few feet of air would 
offer a stubborn resistance to its passage ; but it would 
move freely through the air for producing light! If 
the ether can move freely through some bodies and 
not through others, why? And how is it that it will 
move freely through glass to transmit light, while the 
same glass will retain a charge of electricity, positive 
and negative? We have no reason to assume that 
flames of any kind are ever produced without some 
matter being consumed or changed in condition, even 
if the change lasts only as long as the flaming out. 
What else but flames can sparks of any kind be, when 
all kinds give heat and light as well. Emery grind- 
stones and other hard stones used dry are especially 
prolific in sparking, principally when running fast, but 
a wet stone draws no sparks ; water drowns sparks as 
it does flames. If some matter is involved in the lat- 
ter some matter must be involved in the former, too. 
Similarity of effects must be produced by similarity 



The Revelations of Nature 123 

of causes. Then is it ether that produces electric 
sparks or flames? 

If it does it must consist of matter capable of chang- 
ing its physical state; must be divisible into particles 
capable of attracting and repulsing each other accord- 
ing to conditions; must obey all chemical laws and 
be transformable into heat and light through all 6i 
them. What is the use for such an ether when com- 
mon matter can do that? With radiant matter we 
have all kinds of matter to account for all kinds of 
effects, but with the ether it has to be all in one and 
responsive to everything. 

When a strong current of electricity is passing 
through a copper wire no considerable heating of the 
wire takes place, but if a piece of iron wire be placed 
in the circuit it will become red hot. This shows 
pretty clearly that all the particles of metal in the 
wire are concerned in the transmission of electricity. 
Particles of metal which are not fully responsive to 
the impulse, as the particles of iron, are heated. Sub- 
stances still more rebellious are either evaporated, de- 
composed or consumed, "radiantly" or otherwise ac- 
cording to conditions and kind of substance acted up- 
on. All the heat effects are evolved by electricity be- 
sides others not produced by heat. 



124 The Revelations of Nature 

To invest an imaginary ether with all sorts of imag- 
inary and contradictory properties, reversible or vary- 
ing to suit the circumstances, and which would be ab- 
solutely incompatible if real, is an easy way to escape 
a dilemma, but such a convenient cloak can never 
amount to the real solution of insurmountable dif- 
ficulties encountered with it. 

The only reason for supposing the existence of the 
ether to be a fact would be as a consequence of the 
supposition that electricity or the matter producing 
it is localized around the earth and probably around 
the sun, so that the ether would act as a connecting 
link; but if the electric fluid is present around the 
earth there is nothing to prevent it being present in 
space at large, and it has been found, by kites and 
other experiments, to increase with the altitude where 
the air is more rarified. Where there is no air at all 
the electric fluid should be more dense still. What 
could be its boundary anyway? 

Since even air offers considerable resistance to the 
passage of radiant matter through it, it is hardly likely 
that radiant matter can pass freely through solid 
bodies unless their particles offer a special structure 
or are disposed so as to move more or less in harmony 
with the radiant matter passing through them. But 



The Revelations of Nature 125 

it is not likely that all kinds of radiant matter pass 
through solid bodies at all when such bodies are good 
conductors of electricity. What is more likely is that 
the whirling motion of the particles of radiant matter 
which represent electricity is transferred to and di- 
vided between the particles of solid matter when the 
latter are of a nature adapted to receive this sort of 
motion. So that electricity would be transferred to 
certain bodies — the conductors — the same as heat. But 
the transference would take place a great deal faster 
than with heat and would also be rejected a great deal 
faster. Under strain radiant matter would .Jeak 
through non-conductors more or less freely according 
to the kind of radiant matter involved and the degree 
of resistance or conductivity of the tangible body. 



XIII. 

When the earth is taken as a return current in the 
circuit, such as in electric railways, magnetism is 
transformed into electricity at the power station and 
the electric current is transformed back into magnet- 



126 The Revelations of Nature 

ism where it is led into the earth. It is as if water 
were pumped irom the ocean at one point and returned 
to the ocean at another point, except that in the case 
of water there is no transformation in its state. 

The current is generally understood to return to the 
power house through the rail, and it may in part, but 
at the same time the rail acts as a channel through 
which magnetism is "pumped" from the earth, so to 
speak, and thereby transformed into electricity. There 
is attraction between electricity and magnetism as 
there is attraction between heat and cold. It is this 
mutual attraction of electricity and magnetism which 
keeps the wheel at the end of the trolley pole fast to 
'the overhanging wire and all kind of electric switches 
or keys closing a circuit. It is obviously attraction 
which holds a switch fast to the circuit without any 
visible fastening. Now what is the difference between 
this attraction and gravitation? It is one and the 
same thing. The pull on an electric switch is simply 
localized concentred gravitation. The magnetism 
transformed into electricity at the dynamo is trans- 
formed back into magnetism at the motor. The mag- 
netism offers resistance to its transformation into elec- 
tricity and that is what produces the unaccounted for 
resistance to the motion of the armature of a dynamo. 



The Revelations of Nature 127 

The moment the electricity is allowed to turn again 
into magnetism by moving the motor the gravitational 
force of magnetism past the motor pulls on the cur- 
rent ahead of the motor and the intensity of the cur- 
rent holds together the members of the conductor 
forming the circuit. 

Electricity in doing work is transformed into mag- 
netism, the same as heat in doing work is transformed 
into cold ; that is, the pitch, if we may call it so, is in 
both cases lowered a certain definite extent varying 
with the circumstances, but equal in value in all cases 
and in amount proportional to the work done with a 
given amount of power. 

Electricity of low voltage represents magnetism or 
negative electricity to electricity of higher voltage, 
and they tend to equalize if given a chance. If the 
equalization takes place without doing work there 
must be still a loss of electricity caused by this equali- 
zation, as there is a loss of heat when hot water is 
mixed with cold, but if the electricity does work in 
passing from the higher to the lower voltage the trans- 
formation of electricity into magnetism is thereby in- 
creased in proportion to the work done. 

It is equally to the mutual attraction of heat and 
cold that we owe all heat engines, and that is another 



128 The Revelations of Nature 

source of gravitation. But electricity expands or is 
dissipated into the solid earth and is thereby trans- 
formed into magnetism ; while heat expands and dis- 
sipates into the open air and is thereby transformed 
into cold. It seems that while heat does not expand 
readily through solid bodies, electricity does not ex- 
pand readily through gaseous bodies, but under the 
strain of a steady supply more electricity may be stored 
momentarily in gaseous bodies than in solid bodies, 
while it is the opposite with heat. 

! We can secure energy through the agency of a gas 
or vapor by heat imparted to it, but it is not the gas 
or vapor that is the energy; the latter is contained in 
the heat. Inasmuch as electricity also represents en- 
ergy, it is also carried in or by a material agency, but 
that material agency is not the electricity proper any 
more than a gas or vapor is heat proper. Considering 
that the effect of heat is to produce expansion with- 
out increase of mass, we are warranted in assuming 
that this expansion is caused by an increase in the 
amplitude of motion of the particles of matter carrying 
the heat or a rise in their rate of vibration. The same 
reasoning is necessarily applicable to electricity. 
Hence the pressure of a gas or vapor is a pressure of 



The Revelations of Nature 129 

heat, while a pressure of radiant matter is a pressure 
of electricity. 

But why is it that electricity is put under stress in 
the open while heat is put under stress in confine- 
ment? The reason seems to be that electricity, as 
stated above, expands or diffuses more freely into solid 
matter, while heat diffuses more freely into gaseous 
matter. When the electricity expands into the earth 
it is quickly diffused and transformed into magnetism, 
but not so when forced through an insulated con- 
ductor, the air being an insulator. Inversely, when 
heat expands into the air, it is quickly diffused and 
transformed into cold, but not so when forced through 
a line of pipe as contained in steam under pressure, 
the pipe being the insulator, which is more or less 
efficient. 

A body is so much better conductor of electricity 
when it is colder because heat is a form of vibration 
antagonistic to or interfering with electrical vibration. 
In trying to figure out the "mechanism" of electricity 
or electro-magnetism as generated through a dynamo, 
the first and most important points not to be lost 
sight of are, first, that electricity in itself can be noth- 
ing but motion, while magnetism is a deficiency of mo- 
tion as compared with electricity. This latter conclu- 



130 The Revelations of Nature 

sion is indicated by analogy with cold, for which the 
same reasoning applies. Second, that electricity is a 
repulsive while magnetism is an attractive force, each 
equal and opposite and attracting each other; and 
third, that both forces must act through distance in 
space, because neither can act otherwise. To this lat- 
ter cause is no doubt due the phenomena of induction. 

As to the details of electro-magnetic motion, they 
can only be guessed at by inference with more or less 
probability of approximation at the present time. We 
know that fire and consequently heat also is motion, 
because it can be nothing else, but we do not know 
the details of it any better except for that which can be 
gathered by inference. 

It is very likely that if we could provide a free path 
for the peculiar motion of the particles of matter in- 
volved in producing fire and its transmission of heat 
without interference between themselves that motion 
would give us electricity direct instead of heat. On 
the other hand, if we put an obstruction in the free 
path of electrical motion, that motion is transformed 
into heat at that point. This is a pretty conclusive evi- 
dence that one of the essential differences between 
heat and electricity is that the motion producing the 
former is a kind of battling, confused, irregular mo- 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 131 

tion, shock or bombardment of the particles of matter 
involved, while the electrical motion is a regular uni- 
form motion of all the particles involved and which 
on account of this uniformity is rapidly propagated 
through the mass of a suitable material — a conductor. 

The chemical action of a galvanic battery gives us 
electricity instead of heat because the motion gene- 
rated by it is less impetuous and better adapted to de- 
velop a regular uniform motion than the chemical 
action of combustion producing fire and heat. 

When we boil water in a kettle, the fire does not 
touch the water, but the latter gets hot all the same. 
Its getting hot must of necessity be caused by motion 
or vibration of the particles of metal of the kettle, 
which motion is transmitted to the particles of water. 
This is clearly a transmission of motion of the particles 
of different bodies in different states. Then although 
the kettle is not in apparent motion, it is really in mo- 
tion, a very rapid motion at that; it is invisible be- 
cause each particle of the kettle moves in situ, i. e., 
vibrates without changing its position, but this motion 
is transmitted in part to the water and in part to the 
surrounding air. This motion cannot be entirely iso- 
lated, it is gradually diffused, i. e., transmitted to other 
matter. Then suppose the kettle is moved bodily 



132 The Revelations of Nature 

around by mechanical means. All its particles will be 
again in motion, though in a different way or a dif- 
ferent form of motion. But why may not that form 
of motion be transmitted so as to reproduce itself in 
kind or form? That is what we see accomplished in 
an electric motor receiving its impulse from a dynamo. 
It is the motion which is transmitted from the dynamo 
to the motor, not a fluid or anything else, though I 
do not see what else it could be. But the motion can 
be transmitted only through something that moves, i. 
e., receives the motion and transmits it. This means 
that every particle of metal in the transmitting line of 
wire is put into swift motion or vibration as the metal 
of a kettle is by fire, but the form of motion is differ- 
ent, giving but little heat, because there is very little 
opposition to its propagation through a conductor. 

However, the most direct and positive proof we can 
have that all the particles of matter in a circuit are 
involved in the transmission of the current is in the 
fact that we can actually feel it by making it pass 
through our body. What is passing through our body 
is a transmission of motion pure and simple, (as much 
so as a punch on the nose). A burn on a part of the 
body is also a transmission of motion, but the primary 
effect is local ; it does riot shake the whole body as an 



The Revelations of Nature 133 

electric current. The mode of motion being different, 
it does not spread through matter with the same speed. 

Wherever you find or know there is corpuscular 
motion of matter there you will find electricity. In- 
versely where you find electricity you may know there 
is corpuscular motion of matter. By corpuscular mo- 
tion I mean motion or vibration of matter in some of 
its minutest divisions. We may therefore assume that 
all forms of life, animal or vegetable, generates elec- 
tricity — a fact recently demonstrated by scientific ex- 
periment. We may even assume that all motion of 
matter in any state generates electricity when it is 
not heat that is generated ; and both may be evolved 
at the same time. 

Concerning the electrical motion, the next question 
is: What is it that moves? Matter of course, be- 
cause there is no motion conceivable to man outside 
of matter, whether we see it or not and whatever may 
be its state, kind, quality or properties. It is assumed 
here that any kind of matter will generate electricity 
if the right mode of motion is imparted to it in any 
manner, provided it is adapted to receive it. 

The fluid motion producing fire imparts heat — 
some of its motion — to all bodies in any state, solid, 
liquid or gaseous, and probably to the radiant state 



134 The Revelations of Nature 

also. Similarly the electric current may volatilize 
any kind of matter in any state in the electric fur- 
nace. Fire being born in fluid motion it must be 
assumed that electricity is first generated by fluid mo- 
tion also. This latter fluid motion can be transmitted 
to a long distance through copper wire as the fluid mo- 
tion of fire can be transmitted to water through the 
wall of a kettle. 

From these considerations, the inference is, as stated 
previously, that electricity is first started at the end 
of the brushes of a dynamo, as the electric match, 
where some solid matter is turned to the radiant state 
and apparently that more radiant matter is pumped 
from the earth or from the stationary magnet by the 
armature. The motion of the latter radiant matter is 
sluggish before it is pumped, but a great velocity is 
imparted to it by the motion of the armature. The 
radiant matter pumped through the field magnet may 
not exist in the radiant state before it is pumped but 
may be evolved in proportion as a vacuum of radiant 
matter is produced by the pumping action of the arma- 
ture. Thus the radiant matter circulating through a 
permanent magnet is presumably derived from the 
magnet itself. The act of tempering the steel left a 
peculiar stress within its structure which would cause 



The Revelations of Nature 135 

some particles of metal to get loose and these being 
once set uniformly right in direction of polarity would 
move indefinitely through and around the magnet in 
virtue of their mutual attraction and the lasting stress 
of the steel. This view is borne out by some experi- 
ments in which the bending of cold iron or steel is 
shown to produce traces of magnetism around the 
bend. 

It is understood that radiant matter is necessarily 
playing a part in the generation of electricity and I 
presume that it does all along a closed circuit, but not 
necessarily so. The repulsive and attractive actions 
of conductors in a field of force might take place at 
a distance direct from the metal of the conductors 
without involving the radiant matter of space or 
without emitting radiant matter themselves, but this 
is considered unlikely except where the conductor is 
well insulated beside air insulation. But it does not 
follow that the radiant matter generated or energized 
at the dynamo must travel through the whole length of 
the circuit ; this I consider unlikely. 

All the experiments that have been made in the in- 
vestigation of electricity and magnetism indicate that 
something is moving, either in the form of detached 
rings or of spirals with any number of close convo- 



136 The Revelations of Nature 

lutions. The lines of force in a permanent bar mag- 
net are comparable to a bundle of rings all passing 
through and held by another ring, which is the mag- 
net itself, the bundle of rings spreading at right angles 
all around it and turning within it. On the other hand 
the apparent motion in an electric current is concen- 
tric with the wire carrying it. My idea is that what 
circulates through a permanent or an electro-magnet is 
radiant matter of very low tension whose rings are cut 
off by the attraction of the swiftly moving turns of 
wire in the armature of a dynamo, or by its core, 
this making them jump to the latter which is thereby 
turned into a magnet, from where they enter and are 
strung on the wire wound around the armature and 
forced out along the line of wire forming the circuit. 
This implies that no matter how the rings of radiant 
matter may be cut, broken or twisted, they instantly 
form again into rings smaller or larger, but with a 
permanent disposition to fly around. 

Whether the current of radiant matter thus gene- 
rated and energized by the motion of the armature 
follows along the whole length of the circuit or only 
for a short distance, to be gradually dissipated into 
space, is a matter for conjecture, but in any event it 
imparts some sort of vibration to the particles of metal 



The Revelations $f Nature 137 

of the line which transmits and may reproduce at any 
point on the line the original motion which produces 
the current. 

It is understood that whenever a discharge of elec- 
tricity occurs in the form of sparks, it is carried by 
matter in the radiant state, but that does not involve 
the necessity for said radiant matter to travel from 
the point where the electricity is generated to the 
point of discharge if the distance is great. If the 
sparks are taken from a heavily charged circuit 
through a grounded body, which does not come in con- 
tact with it, and whenever sparks are produced, it 
cannot well be imagined how they can be produced 
without matter, but the substance of the wire carrying 
the current being in a state of electrical stress, some 
radiant matter may be detached from it at any point, 
unless it is the air in the spark gap which is turned to 
the radiant state in the production of sparks. The 
latter supposition is considered improbable. Sparks 
from a grindstone and sparks from any source must 
be of the same nature, and there is no reason for as- 
suming that the air enters in the production of sparks 
from a grindstone. 

We cannot see matter in all of its states with our 
material eyes, still less what is immaterial; even the 



138 The Revelations of Nature 

gaseous state makes matter disappear to our sight. 
Therefore, all that which we do see involves some mat- 
ter in its manifestation most necessarily. We can see 
sparks as well as flames, and the inevitable deduction 
is that some matter is involved in the production of 
sparks as well as in the production of flames. The 
amount of matter may be and probably is very minute 
in either case, but the amount of it is of secondary 
import. A spark which jumps upon a man's body may 
kill him if powerful enough. Such a violent effect 
could not take place through a medium involving no 
matter in its manifestation. It is an action of matter 
upon matter, the first of which is loaded with a pow- 
erful charge of motion or kinetic energy. The swift- 
ness with which this motion is transmitted destroys 
the normal rhythmical motions taking place in the par- 
ticles of matter forming any living animal body 
and which constitutes its life. Some other kinds 
of sudden shock, such as a blow on the temple, 
may produce the same effect. Similarly a gust of wind 
will blow off the light of a lamp, but it may be lighted 
up again. Electrocution is a gust of electric wind 
which blows off human life. It is likely that for a time 
all electrocuted persons could be revived if we only 
knew how, so long as the functional capacity of no 



The Revelations of Nature 139 

vital organ is hopelessly destroyed. Electricity itself 
of suitably low voltage should play a part in restoring 
the subject to life again. 

The fluid motion producing fire imparts heat to 
other bodies, but that fluid does not itself enter or 
circulate through them and it is inferred that the fluid 
motion producing electricity may and probably does 
act on the same principle. 

When one end of an iron bar is heated red or white 
hot the other end of the bar will be hot also if not 
too long, even though it may have been thoroughly 
shielded from the direct action of the fire. The outer 
end is by far less hot than the directly heated end 
because no solid matter is a very good conductor of 
heat; or stating it differently, because heat is a form 
of motion which cannot be transmitted rapidly 
through solid bodies, and only through short dis- 
tances. 

In the case above the fire did not travel from the 
heated end of the bar to the other end nor entered it 
at any point. What is it, then, that did travel? I 
consider this question analogous to the question, 
"What is it that travels along an electric circuit ?" and 
the answers must be also in a measure analogous. 

Although the fire did not travel through the bar, its 



140 The Revelations of Nature 

cooler end got sufficiently heated to radiate heat into 
space around it. I assume that an analogous effect can 
take place along the path of an electric circuit where 
electricity is radiated instead of heat. But electricity 
does not radiate readily into the air ; it radiates readily 
into certain metals and the earth, hence the effects of 
induction. As a body absorbs heat slowly it parts 
with it slowly. But the electrical form of vibration 
is instantly absorbed and instantly rejected by cer- 
tain bodies — the conductors, while other bodies offer 
resistance more or less pronounced to its passage, in 
consequence of which heat is evolved therein. 

Every body has its normal electro-magnetism as it 
has its normal temperature. Here a new word is 
needed to correspond for electricity and magnetism 
to the word "temperature" for heat and cold. For 
brevity and convenience I propose the word "elemate," 
being formed of the two words electricity and mag- 
netism. 

Inasmuch as electricity and magnetism attract each 
other as heat and cold attract each other, a current of 
electricity attracts the normal elemate of the air and of 
all bodies as a current of steam passing through a pipe 
attracts the normal temperature of the air and other 
bodies, because there is in both pairs a difference of 



The Revelations of Nature 141 

"potential" and a tendency to equalize by mutual ex- 
change. 

For this reason the bodies containing either differ- 
ence of potential must be attracted toward each other. 
Indeed it is apparently within these two forms of at- 
traction that is to be found the true secret of what 
is called universal gravitation and of all phenomena of 
polarity. 

The cold and magnetism of the earth and the heat 
and electricity of the sun attract each other with a de- 
gree of intensity proportional to the density of the 
earth, which corresponds to its capacity for transform- 
ing heat into cold and electricity into magnetism, so 
that the distance of the earth and of every planet from 
the sun corresponds to this capacity based on their re- 
spective density. Forcible shortening of a planet's orbit 
would make it receive more heat and electricity than it 
could transform, at the same time reducing its ca- 
pacity for transforming. The result would be swelling 
of the planet, and on being left loose would be driven 
beyond its normal orbit until brought back by gradual 
cooling. This implies that the normal temperature 
and elemate at the surface of all planets is equal, the 
native supply compensating the deficiency of that 
received from the sun. The presumption is also that 



142 T&* Revelations of Nature 

in proportion as the density of planets increases their 
orbit is shortened thereby, and that the same effect is 
produced by gradual decrease of solar radiation. 

The Amperean currents of electricity are probably 
produced by the motion of the earth round its axis and 
around the sun. The whirling motion of all the par- 
ticles composing the earth would be transmitted to a 
certain amount of particles at the surface producing 
currents. 

Electricity being in a measure comparable to heat, 
all bodies may be more or less electrified as they may 
be more or less heated; but it looks as if electricity 
were what we might call the heat of radiant matter, 
and heat proper the heat of tangible matter. 

Heat applied to radiant matter should increase its 
electrification and electricity added to heat should in- 
crease the heat of the tangible matter. When two 
electrified bodies first attract and then repel each 
other, it may be assumed that the charge of radiant 
matter upon each body has not the same degree of elec- 
trification before the attraction and that the attraction 
producing contact equalizes the electrification, after 
which the two bodies repel each other. 

The friction of a soft body would detach more radi- 
ant particles of that body than the same amount of 
friction on a hard body, in consequence of which the 



The Revelations of Nature 143 

number of particles of radiant matter evolved by the 
friction would be less on the hard body than on the 
soft body. The two bodies would contain the same 
amount of electricity, but that on the hard body being 
contained in fewer particles would be under a higher 
tension if the surface of both bodies were equal, and 
this excess of tension would tend to equalize with the 
lower tension on the soft body. The hard body would 
contain a positive and the soft body a negative charge. 

Similarly the temperature of two bodies when it is 
different will equalize if given the opportunity, after 
which they should be found to repel each other, princi- 
pally if the temperature is still high after equalization. 
The equalization of temperature between bodies may 
take place by contact without either body leaving its 
position, and under proper conditions the same may 
obtain between opposite charges of electricity. 

According to the foregoing, the friction of many if 
not all bodies would evolve radiant matter containing 
electricity, and while the radiant matter would be of 
many kinds the electricity would be all of one kind, 
whether produced by friction or chemical action, in the 
same way that heat is all of one kind whether it is pro- 
duced by the combustion of one kind of fuel or another, 
or in any other way. 



144 The Revelations of Nature 

What we call a charge of static electricity is a charge 
of radiant matter under stress. There is no electricity 
in it so long as it remains undisturbed and well insu- 
lated ; there is only a potentiality for producing elec- 
tricity, and the moment the chance is given it the elec- 
tricity is produced by the rapid motion of the radiant 
matter and the charge disappears. 

In electrolytic action, what obtains is electrical 
evaporation, by or with dissociaton of elements, while 
heat produces evaporation without dissociation. 

The colliding and rolling of clouds over each other 
generates electricity which, being thus imprisoned in 
the mass of a non-conductor — the air — has to make a 
vent to reach a place where it can expand more freely. 
This is what gives us the flash of lightning or thunder 
which rents the air to make a passage, thus spread- 
ing the charge and giving it a greater area for expand- 
ing more gradually and thus vanish. The length of 
the flash is of course proportional to the charge and it 
follows the line of least resistance. When oppo- 
site currents of relatively hot air are moving fast 
enough they generate electricity in abundance, and if 
they are charged with moisture give us thunder-storms 
because the peals of thunder shaking the air cause the 
moisture to condense and agglomerate swiftly and pre- 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 145 

cipitately fall. When the opposite currents are com- 
posed of relatively cold air, however, the latter is then 
a better conductor of electricity and this spreading 
more readily through the mass of air gives us no 
thunder. 

Cold increases the electric conductivity of air as it 
does for other bodies. For this reason the atmosphere 
is more charged with electricity in winter than in sum- 
mer, and thunder-storms are less frequent in winter 
on account of this increased conductivity. The great- 
est cold on the earth may be assumed to occur at the 
magnetic poles where the most electricity is trans- 
formed into magnetism, while most heat is trans- 
formed into cold at the equatorial regions, principally 
through the luxuriant vegetation. Consequently the 
magnetic poles are also the poles of cold. This will 
furnish the explanation of the north and south polar- 
ity of the magnetic needle and of its diurnal, monthly, 
and annual deviations. As to its secular deviations 
I suggest that they may be caused by the work of 
man in changing the vegetal conditions of the earth 
surface, such as opening new localities or countries to 
agricultural pursuits. Increased vegetable growth 
would transform more heat into cold and thereby 
lower the average temperature of the locality, while 



146 The Revelations $f Nature 

decrease of vegetable growth would have an opposite 
effect, and this would tend in turn to alter the position 
of one or both poles of cold and magnetism. The same 
cause could also produce slight annual variations. 

It is assumed in any event that the deviations of the 
magnetic from the geographic poles are due principally 
to geographical configurations and vegetal condi- 
tions of the earth's surface. The reader desiring to 
weigh the probability of accuracy of this theory is re- 
ferred to the article "Magnetic Poles of the Earth — 
Secular Variations'' in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
Vol. XVI, page 163. 

The capital facts concerning electro-magnetism are 
considered as pretty well established, namely, that 
electricity and magnetism are in themselves nothing" 
but motion of matter; that electricity and magnetism 
are the opposite poles of one single continuous force 
with an unknown number of degrees in its scale, trans- 
formable both ways the one into the other; and that 
this force is derived from the chemism of matter. As 
to the inner workings of electro-magnetism, an at- 
tempt has been made to clear out some ground, but it is 
not presumed that these dissertations, even if all cor- 
rect in the main would settle everything that is to be 
settled by any means. Therefore ail these considera- 



The Revelations of Nature ]47 

tions are given only as suggestions to investigators, 
not as final conclusions, but on the whole they are be- 
lieved to lead in the right direction. 



XIV. 

The inclination of the axis of all the planets appears 
to be in the same direction as far as known. The in- 
clination seems to be inversely proportional to the 
speed of the axial rotation, the inclination being least 
where the rotation is the fastest. These facts would 
seem to indicate the existence of relations of polarity 
between the sun and the planets which w^ould be the 
cause of the inclination of the axis of the latter. 

The axis of the sun itself may be inclined on the 
plane of its movement of translation. As understood, 
the speed of rotation would tend to disturb the polar 
attraction, while a body not turning upon its axis, such 
as the moon, would always present one and the same 
pole, maybe more or less inclined, to the body around 
which it moves. 

Such relations of polarity must exist anyway, but 
the action is not clear, as each pole of the planets 
comes alternately to be the nearest to the sun. In any 



148 The Revelations of Nature 

event, the poles of cold and magnetism on the planets 
would be the ones acted upon by the sun's polarity 
and not the geographical poles. 



XV. 

As regards attractions and repulsions, the attraction 
of gravitation evidently takes place at a distance 
through space since the attraction of the planets upon 
each other resides in their own substance, and this is 
the combined attraction of all the particles of matter 
in each planet, without interference between them, 
so that the attraction cannot be confined and put under 
bounds. 

This gives us an illustration of the repulsive action 
of radiant matter which is diametrically opposite to 
that of tangible m'atter, and for the same reason its 
particles have to repel each other at a distance, but 
while these particles can be confined and put under 
stress, their repulsive action cannot be so isolated. 
The increased repulsive action they exert upon each 
other under stress is brought about by their displace- 
ment from their respective center of repulsive action, 
and this remains vacant in their absence, other free 



The Revelations of Nature 149 

particles in the radiant state not being allowed to oc- 
cupy it. If the radiant matter in the electric charge 
has been generated in any way and not extracted from 
the radiant matter of space, some magnetism has been 
transformed into electricity and an equal amount of 
the radiant matter of space has to be driven down into 
the earth where its electricity is transformed into mag- 
netism. 

That both the attractive and repulsive actions be- 
tween the particles of mater must take place at a dis- 
tance is evident from the fact that there is no other 
conceivable way for them to take place, for if it were 
not so all the particles would have to occupy the same 
space as one of the particles. In the contraction of 
solid matter it might be argued that the particles them- 
selves are contracted in volume, but while this might 
be the case, the force impelling the particles to con- 
tract would still act at a distance since each particle 
occupies a different space and they could not be bound 
together in a solid mass if they had no attraction for 
each other at a distance. 

The repulsive action at a distance between the par- 
ticles of radiant matter is still more evident than the 
attraction at a distance, except that of gravitation, be- 
cause they occupy a vastly larger space than in solid 



150 The Revelations of Nature 

matter. Furthermore, we have seen before concern- 
ing chemistry, that all chemical actions are necessarily- 
produced by repulsions and attractions between the 
particles of matter, and such attractions and repulsions 
must inevitably take place at a distance for the excel- 
lent reason that there is no other way for them to take 
place. The combustion of fuel is a striking example 
of attraction at a distance which takes place between 
the atoms of oxygen and carbon. 

The mechanism of combustion appears to be started 
by a peculiar motion imparted to some of the carbon 
molecules or atoms and this molecular motion being 
once started it is successively transmitted to all the 
particles of the mass whereby the marriage or union 
of oxygen and carbon is effected. All chemical ac- 
tions must be produced by a change in form, speed, or 
amplitude of motion of the particles of matter involved 
resulting from their union or disintegration; or the 
particles would pass from a state of rest to a state of 
activity or the reverse. 

The particles of all compressible fluids, such as 
gases, do not fill the whole space in which they stand 
in the normal state, otherwise these fluids would not 
be compressible, yet there seems to be no doubt that 
these fluids are composed of individual particles, what- 



The Revelations sf Nature 151 

ever their state of division or of further divisibility 
may be, and consequently they must repel each other 
at a distance. 

We know that it is through the abnormal repulsive 
action imparted to the particles of matter by heat that 
we secure energy for doing work. Since we are en- 
abled to use energy for doing work through the med- 
ium of electricity, the same must be contained in some- 
thing substantial, capable of being confined and put 
under stress or pressure, and this evidently means re- 
pulsion at a distance between the particles of some- 
thing. The ether? We may as well leave it in peace 
since we know that the particles of common matter 
are themselves capable of repelling each other at a dis- 
tance whether their repulsive action be brought about 
by heat or electricity. 



XVI. 

Difference of color must be due to motion like every 
other immaterial effect or entity. It would be pro- 
duced by difference of speed as held by physicists. 
Every other quality and property of matter may also 



152 The Revelations of Nature 

be due to a difference in vibration, and consequently 
matter in its essence may be all of one kind after all. 
This implies that every particle of matter in any state 
is in a continuous state of vibration. In any event, if 
matter is all of one kind as many physicists are dis- 
posed to assume there must be one cause, or prin- 
ciple through which it may present so many different 
aspects, and there seems to be no other than a differ- 
ence in vibration. It would be different if it were 
assumed that matter is of at least three essentially dif- 
ferent kinds ; but all one kind means that all particles 
of matter in its minutest division are exactly alike 
in every particular, and this being the case would leave 
only the difference in the form of motion or vibration 
to give it a basis for possessing all the attributes and 
properties we find in it. 

Every power of nature being necessarily derived 
from matter, its everlasting vibration in one form or 
another is not an untenable proposition. There are at 
least five possible kinds or forms of regular vibration : 
(i) Reciprocal or back and forth in a straight line; (2) 
axial rotation in one direction ; (3) oscillatory or back 
and forth around the axis; (4) circular, or describing 
a circle; (5) oscillatory in a semi-circle. Then some 
of these may be amplified more or less ; and also, two 



The Rev datum of Nature 153 

of the forms cited above may be embraced together, 
such as axial rotation with circular movement. 

This is suggested without arguing that it is or is 
not the primordial mechanism of matter, but merely 
as a possibility, yet a probability if matter is all of one 
kind, and this is yet to be found out. 

It is known that the first form of vibration cited 
above does exist and seems to be everlasting. It is 
known as the Brownian movement. It is not at all 
certain, however, that the Brownian movement repre- 
sents the form of vibration of the ultimate particle of 
matter, though it may. But if this is the only kind of 
primordial vibration to be found in matter, then mat- 
ter is of more than one kind. On the other hand, if 
matter is all of one kind, its ultimate particles have 
more than one form of vibration, none of which forms 
is permanent but changeable, though it may require 
heat or electricity of a very high degree, to effect the 
changes. So far the Brownian movement has been 
found unaffected by heat or electricity, though the 
particles of matter examined were presumably not the 
ultimate. This indicates a probability that matter is of 
more than one kind. 

Instead of being of fewer kinds than we know of it 
may also be of many more. That is to say, what we 



154 The Revelations of Nature 

call elements may be composed of many primordial 
elements. Inasmuch as every element is dis- 
tinguished by many lines peculiarly its own in the 
spectroscope I hold as likely that every line represents 
at least one primordial element. 



XVII. 

We do not feel the difference in the normal 
electricity and magnetism or elemate of the 
earth or of the bodies with which we come 
in contact as we do with heat and cold, be- 
cause the life of our body is apparently main- 
tained specially by caloric combustion ; but it is likely 
to be different with cold blooded animals, like fishes 
and frogs in which the spark of life must be main- 
tained by electric combustion, since the fluid they 
live in — the water — would absorb the heat their body 
could develop as fast as generated, and their temper- 
ature could never rise above that of the water they live 
in. Besides it is hardly likely that water contains 
enough free oxygen for producing caloric combustion 
in the body of fishes through their breathing. The 
electrical phenomena exhibited by various fishes is 



The Revelations of Nature 155 

also of a nature to confirm these views, and there is 
piobably a great deal more to learn on this latter sub- 
ject than is known at present. It is likely, however, 
that electricity plays a part in the life of hot blooded 
animals, which may vary with each individual, but 
caloric combustion must predominate. 



XVIII. 

Here we may again exclaim: The universe is an 
unbounded laboratory and all its life and motion are 
evolved from chemistry. 

If the chemistry of matter can do that much, there 
is no special or any reason why it should stop there. 

In the same way that chemical evolve physical 
actions, the latter may evolve the intellect or spirit. 

Nothing is lost in nature which is ever active in 
transforming and a Divine Essence must pervade it. 
The doctrine of evolution of physical manifestations 
from a lower to a higher order deserves careful con- 
sideration. Our thoughts, for instance, are physical 
actions emanating from lower physical actions. They 
are a power or entity in themselves and are never lost. 
It is seemingly this power that evolves the apparent 



156 Vbe Reve fattens of Nature 

wonders of hypnotism and miraculous cures. We can 
repeatedly recall a thought after it has been forgotten. 
We can recall all our thoughts in the hypnotic sleep 
and also in the short space of time when one is in 
imminent and immediate danger of instant death by 
accident, such as a fall. They may be contained in 
brain cells, but they have an existence and are liber- 
ated at the death of the body. This must be the reason 
why they shoot out at an instant the life of the body 
is expected to be cut short. Those who have ex- 
perienced a dangerous fall and survive wonder at the 
apparent length of time that elapsed in the fall, per- 
mitting them to review their whole life, which they 
ail do. The greater part of this apparent time, how- 
ever, may be that which elapsed after the fall and before 
they regain consciousness, when the thoughts have re- 
turned to their cells. In such occurrences the death 
blow is probably not felt and the death may have 
occurred before the fatal stroke is actually consum- 
mated, as is evidenced by deaths from fright without 
bodily injury. 

In cases of recovery the spirit has apparently been 
temporarily out of the body. Indeed, according to 
alleged spirit communications, it happens in some rare 
cases that persons have been dead for some time be- 



The Revelations of Nature 157 

fore they realize the fact, although in full conscious- 
ness. 

These considerations lead to the conclusion that our 
entity cannot vanish at the grave, and that all that we 
can see is not all that exists. The real man is not the 
matter of his body any more than heat is the matter 
that produces it. 

Man is more of a spirit, even in the material world, 
than he is generally prepared to admit. He is a spirit 
in the chrysalis. Since nothing can be lost or annihil- 
ated in nature, what animates the body can not be 
destroyed when the animation stops. When heat dis- 
appears it is not lost, it is transformed into cold or 
other force. Similarly, when the life of the body dis- 
appears it is not lost, it is transformed into something 
else or into a different condition. 

In fact it can be said that all the real powers of 
nature are things which in themselves are immaterial, 
consisting of motion and the capacity to produce it. 

They must consist of that because it is logically in- 
conceivable what else they may consist of. All that 
we have to explain all, is matter and motion of that 
matter, which science calls inert. The motion may 
vary in form, in amplitude, in speed, in complexity, in 
kind and shape of moving particles, in size of the same 



158 The Revelations of Nature 

which may be simple or compound of one or many 
kinds, and in vast agglomerations of particles of all 
kinds constituting celestial bodies and groups of 
bodies, but it is always motion. Even the rest of mat- 
ter could be only relative and not absolute. It is pre- 
sumable that not a single atom of matter in the uni- 
verse has ever occupied exactly the same point of 
space twice, or once for one second of time in all past 
eternity, since the sun and stars are themselves moving 
through space at a tremendous speed without follow- 
ing a regular periodic course, and seldom if ever come 
again to the same regions of space. 

Repulsions and attractions at a distance are im- 
material in themselves; they are what we might call 
the spirit of inorganic matter. "Matter is intelligent," 
said the celebrated Edison some years ago, and so it 
is, but besides, it must be also the source of all born 
organic intelligence. 

The combustion of fuel producing fire for instance is 
a chemical action which is brought about by molecu- 
lar or atomic motion. One result of this motion is the 
chemical change of properties of the matter involved 
and its change of condition or state; but besides this 
change has evolved heat from cold, both of which are 
immaterial in themselves; yet this something imma- 



The Revelations of Nature 159 

terial is one of the mighty powers of nature. It can 
be transferred to other bodies. It can be transformed 
back into cold or into electricity, magnetism or light, 
although light has also been evolved together with the 
heat. All of these are physical actions, all immaterial, 
yet all essential to organic life as we have it ; all con- 
cur to .he motion of the universe. Now life in turn, 
and the motion of the universe are immaterial in them- 
selves, but both are expressions of motion. Instinct 
and intellect must be still higher expressions of motion 
since tiey can not be themselves material, but these 
subjects will be studied more in detail in the last part 
of this work. 



XIX. 

Maiy words have been coined which are constantly 
employed to express or define some entities or effects 
which yet would be utterly meaningless unless such 
words refer to matter and motion of matter in some 
form: such as force, energy, electricity, magnetism, 
heat, cold, light, radiation, reflection, refraction, 
diffraction, dissipation, sound, taste, smell, eto. and 
the nonentities, the ether, phlogiston, etc, 



160 



The Revelations of Nature 



It does not seem to have occurred to men's minds 
that the only conceivable and definable immaterial 
entity, aside from Time, Space and Number, is motion 
or the entities representing embodiments of motion. 
Every quality, effect or property of matter is neces- 
sarily related to or expressed by motion. But, motion 
of what? It must be motion of matter of sone kind 
in some state, unless it be also motion of moton. In 
the latter case accomplished motion would have to 
remain an entity in itself. This subject will be dis- 
cussed later on. Putting matter aside with all its 
creations, expressed in motion, all that is left is Time, 
Space and Number. Anything else is beyond human 
concept. This is not an abstruse proposition or meta- 
physical Utopia. What is abstruse is the attenpt to 
conceive and define the inconceivable, as is doie now 
by assuming the existence of entities independert from 
matter, its motion, and its own capacity to proluce it 
through its properties of attraction and repulsion. 
How could we conceive of a quality as an imnaterial 
entity for instance independently of matter aid mo- 
tion? It is the kind and embodiment of motion that 
makes or made the quality, either in a mateial or 
spiritual sense, and matter is the factor of notion. 
Thus any action, good, bad or indifferent is >ccom- 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 161 

plished by motion ; the thought of doing it is effected 
in and by motion. The taste of an apple, the smell of 
a rose, the color of both, the sound of music, the feel- 
ing of temperature or of any object to the touch, are 
all effects of motion — different combinations of kind, 
mode or speed of motion, and of kinds of matter in 
different states. If matter is all of one kind, its ap- 
parent differences can be attributed only to differences 
of mode or speed of vibration, either permanent or 
temporary. There is nothing else conceivable to man's 
mind to account for all the apparent differences, and 
physicists, I believe, are prepared to accept this view 
which is not entirely novel. 

If the power to produce motion were not contained 
in or by matter itself we would of course have to 
assume the existence of material universal influences 
which man's mind could not apprehend. But the 
chemical properties of matter are clear enough proof 
that matter carries with itself the power to move itself, 
since such properties are necessarily expressed by 
motion. Otherwise we would have to assume the 
existence of immaterial influences different for each 
chemical effect, while matter itself would have no 
quality and would play no part in the chemical pro- 
cesses except that of yielding to such influences, which 



162 The Revelations of Nature 

is evidently quite absurd. The chemism of matter is 
clearly the base of all motion as a whole and in all its 
details, and the transformations or reversals of forces 
render chemism everlasting in its effects and poten- 
tialities. 

When we consider that all kinds of matter are capa- 
ble of chemically acting or being acted upon, which is 
equivalent, and that in all chemical actions minute 
particles of matter must of necessity by flying from 
one point to another, i. e., toward or away from other 
matter, of their own accord, it seems indeed wasted 
time to look outside of matter for an explanation of all 
its motions, without excepting the grandest of all — 
celestial mechanism. It is equally insensate to call it 
inert when its restless activity is manifested in thous- 
ands of ways whose culmination is life and when 
motion is its very principle and purpose. 

You take a rock in your hands and say, "that rock 
cannot move unless I, somebody or something else 
moves it." But are you sure of that? Its inabil- 
ity to move is only relative. In the first place it 
actually supplies force enough to hurl itself perman- 
ently through space at a rate of speed that no cannon 
ball has yet approached. The energy which hurls it 
around the sun emanates from the sun, but the force 



The Revelations of Nature 163 

which makes it follow the sun in its flight through 
space emanates from the rock. As a part of the earth 
it contributes its own proportional share of attraction 
which makes the earth follow the sun, although at a 
distance of 93,000,000 miles. That is without taking 
into account the flight of the solar system as a whole. 

Secondly, the atoms or particles of the elements 
forming the rock are bound together with a force such 
that probably only the electric furnace can dissociate 
them. Therefore they resist dissociation with a force 
proportional to the energy expended in effecting it. 
Since such dissociation can be effected, it is clearly 
force that resists it — force of attraction. After chemi- 
cal dissociation of the elements of the rock they are 
now in condition to enter into new combinations and 
thereby generate energy or get ready to do so. 

The electrical furnace is a chemical action or is 
derived from it as well as caloric combustion, and its 
effect upon the rock is equally chemical. It will act 
where the usual laboratory ingredients will not ; hence 
there is no denying the responsiveness of all kinds of 
matter to chemical action. Where heat, as a product 
of chemical action, is not sufficient or appropriate to 
effect dissociation or combination, electricity is. 
Electricity is as surely a product of the repulsions and 



164 Tbe Revdatiins $f Nature 

attractions or chemism of matter as heat, and so are 
any and all other natural causes and effects. Dyna- 
mite and other explosives ought to give us a little 
idea of what the power of matter is under proper 
conditions. All the laws of nature and nature itself 
are contained and expressed in matter and motion. All 
the differences are differences in the mode of motion. 
This key to the mysteries of nature being once 
acknowledged will make clear many things now in an 
inextricable chaos. 

We have now the theory of electrons recently 
launched out and already widely accepted. The par- 
ticulars of it, being known, need not be detailed here. 
It is an advance upon former theories anyway by the 
fact that the division of atoms of matter is acknowl- 
edged or admitted, but the proposition that "imma- 
terial atoms of electricity or electrons/' occupy the 
same space as the particles or divisional units of atoms 
of matter — radiant matter — would express nothing 
conceivable but words, if it were not for the fact that 
electricity consists of motion, which is really imma- 
terial. All accomplished motion is an immaterial en- 
tity, but it does not occupy any space. The sum total 
of all the accomplished motion of the universe can be 
lodged into the space of an atom of matter with the 



The Revelations of Nature J 65 

atom besides. What requires room is motion taking 
place, but that does not constitute "atoms. " The only 
thing conceivable that may, must and does occupy the 
same space as a particle of matter and its range of 
attraction and repulsion is the space itself; so it is, 
of course, with all matter. Electricity is clearly im- 
material in itself, for we can create electricity out of 
magnetism as we can create heat out of cold, but we 
can not create matter; neither can we destroy it. Con- 
sequently, radiant matter or particles of atoms are not 
the electricity itself. The potential electricity con- 
tained in a cell or battery, even a storage battery, has 
no more existence as electricity proper before it is 
generated than the potential heat contained in a piece 
of coal has existence as heat before combustion. In 
both cases when the essential ingredients of combus- 
tion or one of them is exhausted further supply of heat 
or electricity stops. The meaning is obvious. The 
combustion or chemical change does not and cannot 
create anything besides motion, while the motion is 
essential to produce the chemical effect. Then, that 
very motion is the heat or the electricity as the case 
may be. If electricity is motion when produced one 
way it must be motion as well when produced in any 
other way. 



166 The Revelations of Nature 

When you have rubbed a piece of sealing wax or of 
amber or glass on your coat sleeve you have manu- 
factured electricity through the energy in your mus- 
cles, but you did not create matter, did you? The 
electricity did not exist in the rubbing parts either 
before the friction, for it would have shown be- 
fore as well as after the friction and the friction would 
have nothing to do with it, while it has all to do. It 
should have shown as well before the friction if out- 
side the rubbing parts ; therefore it was created neces- 
sarily. To rational understanding the only thing con- 
ceivable that can have been created is motion. These 
are simple, self evident facts,though they have to be 
pointed out to become so. 

The caloric or electric motion being once imparted to 
the particles of matter in the act of combustion or 
otherwise would continue indefinitely if not trans- 
mitted to other matter, but by contact or proximity 
with colder or less electrified matter adapted to absorb 
the motion, the heat is bound to be more or less grad- 
ually transformed into cold and the electricity into 
magnetism. There are no perfect insulators for either 
heat or electricity and the leakage of either increases 
with its intensity. 

What makes the forces correlated is that they all 



The Revelations of Nature 167 

represent motion and that motion of one kind can be 
transformed into another kind, indirectly by mechan- 
ism if not directly in the identical particles of matter. 
The creation of magnetism and cold may be a de- 
struction of motion, but more probably a reduction of 
its amplitude or speed, which is really a destruction of 
a part of the motion, or a change of some kind in the 
motion anyway, such as a change of form, all of which 
changes may be included and not necessarily always 
identical. Thus we have natural cold, machine pro- 
duced cold, and the cold representing vegetable 
growth. Where the effects are different the causes 
must have some difference. 

Another claim concerning the so-called electrons is 
that electricity is the base of all and that matter itself 
is composed of electricity. This looks like transposing 
puzzles or making three out of two. Apart from that 
the proposition is evidently untenable anyway. Now, 
something is the base of nature, but if we don't know 
what matter is we would remain quite as much in 
the dark and even more so if we assume that it is 
made of electricity, for that would not tell us what 
electricity is or what matter is in its essence for that 
fact. Or if we assume that matter and electricity are 
one and the same thing, that would be only giving 



168 The Revelations tf Nature 

two names to that thing. The same thing cannot 
be material and immaterial at the same time or at any- 
time successively, even if absolute destruction or crea- 
tion is admitted in the case, for absolute or primary 
creation would be made out of nothing and absolute 
destruction would leave nothing. The only secondary 
immaterial creation conceivable is motion, and mo- 
tion is inconceivable without matter. Therefore, if 
matter has ever been created it is it that represents 
primary creation, while it creates motion which is 
secondary creation. If electricity is not motion then 
it must be matter, whatever its state may be. We can 
say as much of any other immaterial entity, such as 
heat, cold, magnetism or light. Even the highest at- 
tributes, such as life and intellect or spirit would not 
have to be excluded. All would be matter. The very 
fact that electricity acts upon matter is proof enough 
that it is itself derived from matter and that its actions 
and effects are chemical in their nature. In these re- 
gards it is evidently comparable to heat, both in action 
and derivation. Nobody that I know ever claimed in 
modern times that heat is not an attribute of matter 
or that matter is composed of heat. There is, there- 
fore, no more reason to make either claim for electric- 
ity than for heat. Further refutation is believed un- 



The Revelations of Nature 159 

necessary. In consequence of which we must leave 
matter remain the base of the universe, whether it is 
in a visible or invisible, tangible or intangible state or 
condition. 

Still another claim made for matter ( or elec- 
tricity) is that the mind is actually made of it. Mat- 
ter of any kind is unstable in any of its states, known 
or unknown, because it is ever susceptible of being 
acted upon by other matter and its condition thereby 
changed. Hence if the mind were made of matter as 
assumed by some investigators, the mind would be 
perishable ; no permanent ego could exist, since if made 
out of matter it could be acted upon by other matter 
either in the same or a different state and thereby 
destroyed; death would be true and absolute and the 
universe purposeless. 



PART III. 



Life and Spirit. The Infinite. Immortality. 



Like every other manifestation of nature, all life is 
motion derived from the chemism of matter. Life 
appears to be a chemical function of matter where 
complexity of organism and of consequent motion 
taking place through it goes to make for intellect. 
The final inner expression of this motion would no 
doubt reside in the convolutions of the brain. Their 
number or intricacy and not necessarily the mass of 
brain matter would correspond to the degree of in- 
tellect in all animal species, and would have many 
different bents according to the peculiar disposition of 
the convolutions, and these would also correspond to 
and be dependent upon the other structures of the 
body ; so that a strong, good health and the amount of 
vitality would be an important factor for the full de- 
velopment of the intellectual faculties attainable by the 
subject. 

Sensations of pleasure, pain, feeling of any kind, 



The Revelations of Nature 171 

smell, taste, sight, are all sensations of motion, prob- 
ably both from the body and from matter independent 
of the body, each sense supplementing what is de- 
ficient in the others. For this reason the greatest pain 
or enjoyment may be attained only when all the senses 
are concerned, but sufficiently increased acuteness of 
anyone of the senses could adapt it to convey the im- 
pressions or knowledge conveyed by all. 

Up to this point at least we may assume that what 
moves is matter. Beyond that we might leave it to 
conjecture. Still, the mysteries of matter in a highly 
attenuated condition are likely to extend throughout 
the spiritual domain in the form of motion. The "aura" 
or astral body of the spiritualists would answer this 
description. Every living organism, animal or vege- 
table, would have its astral body which would be the 
product of its life. It may be remarked here that cer- 
tain alleged spirit messages state that the spirit comes 
from the atom but do not explain how. 

The repulsions and attractions of matter being ever 
reversible, it follows that the amount of motion which 
in the infinity of time can be and must be derived from 
them is infinity, even if the amount of matter in the 
universe were a finite quantity. Now if motion in 
itself were something transformable into something 



172 The Revelations of Nature 

else, either dependently or independently from matter 
— that ought to be good material for spirit making. 
Indeed it is not at all inadmissible that a spirit repre- 
sents accumulated motion, which nature provides ad 
infinitum, as we will see later. Transforming one form 
of motion into another form, such as electricity into 
heat or heat into electricity does not change the name, 
which remains motion, although the properties are 
different but a spirit could also be a form of organized 
motion derived from life and of which matter in an 
unknown state would still be the base. The attitude 
of science on the subject of spiritualism and spirit 
communication tends naturally to retard its progress 
as it does on many other lines of knowledge, yet these 
are mysteries which appear to be within the range of 
man to investigate, not merely in the abstract or as a 
matter of faith, but in a practical way, and their ap- 
prehension, even if partial, is the highest attainment 
the human mind may long for. 

If man ever succeeds in grasping some of the higher 
mysteries of nature, it can be only through intercom- 
munication with the world of spirits. 

The amount of evidence of spirit life and return is 
too vast to be dismissed as mere fable by the well in- 
formed, but it is not by assisting at a "seance" with a 



The Revelations of Nature 173 

spirit of skepticism and the purpose to deride what is 
seen or heard that one may gather much information ; 
it is by consulting the abundant literature on the sub- 
ject, principally the best. 

The following is from the Scientific American, Sup- 
plement of March 28, 1896, first published jin the 
Arena : 

DE ROCHAS' EXPERIMENTS ON HYPNOTISM. 

Few of our modern attempts to solve scientifically 
the great mystery of life have led us to more astonish- 
ing results than the discoveries made recently in Paris 
by Col. A. De Rochas, the well known scientist and 
director of the Ecole Polytechnique, concerning the 
"luminous effluvia/' or magnetic emanations, from the 
bodies of living men. For the benefit of such readers 
as may not be familiar with previous discoveries, the 
knowledge of which is necessary in order to under- 
stand the recent investigations of Col. De Rochas, I 
must translate first here some statements of a cele- 
brated Austrian chemist, the Baron von Reichenbach, 
who was the first scientist, over forty years ago, who 
discovered the "luminous effluvia," or phosphorescent- 
like emanations from animals, plants and magnets. 



174 The Revelations of Nature 

Here are Reichenbach's own words ("Lettres Odi- 
ques et Magnetiques," Stuttgart, 1856) : 

"Take a 'sensitive' man and put him in a dark room. 
Take along a cat, a bird, a butterfly, if you have one, 
or only some flower-pots. After a few hours of such a 
sitting in the dark, you will hear that man say some 
very strange things. The flowerpots will appear to 
him in the darkness and become perceptible. At first 
they will appear as a gray cloud on a black back- 
ground, then he will see some lighter spots ; finally 
each flower will become distinct, and all forms will 
appear more and more clearly. Your cat, your bird, 
your butterfly, will all appear thus in the dark, and 
some parts of these animals will appear luminous. 
Then your sensitive man will tell you that he sees you. 
Tell him to look at your hands. At first he will say 
that he sees a gray smoke : then the fingers will appear 
with their own light. He will see a luminous pro- 
tuberance at each finger, sometimes as long as the 
finger itself. You will then probably hear him say 
with much surprise that the colors of the light are not 
the same in all parts of the body ; that the right hand 
shows a blue light, and the left hand a yellow-reddish 
light; that the same difference appears at your feet; 
and also that all the right side of your body and face 



The Revelations of Nature 175 

is bluish and darker than the left side, which is yellow- 
reddish and much lighter." (Letter 5.) 

Reischenbach found something else. He discovered 
that under similar conditions in a dark room a magnet 
emits a blue light at its north pole and a yellow-red- 
dish light at the south pole. This light varied, accord- 
ing to the strength of the magnet and the sensitiveness 
of the seer, from one to three feet in diameter. It 
appeared like a fiery flow intermingled with sparks. 
Reichenbach's experiments were repeated in England 
by Alfred Russell Wallace, Gregory, and other promi- 
nent naturalists, and were fully confirmed. It is only 
recently that Reichenbach's discovery was taken out of 
oblivion by Dr. Durville, Dr. Luys, and Col. De Ro- 
chas, with what extraordinary results we shall now 
see. 

Col. De Rochas hypnotized at different stages two 
different subjects at the same time and in the same 
room. Let us call them A and B. A reported that he 
could see a luminous or phosphorescent coating on B's 
body; he could see besides that B's eyes, mouth, ears, 
nostrils and finger ends were emitting a flamelike light, 
blue on one side of the body, yellow-reddish on the 
other. A common glass of water being brought, it was 
put within the radius of B's luminous effluvia as de- 



176 The Revelations of Nature 

scribed by A, who could see how far they reached. 
After a few minutes A reports that the water itself 
has become luminous, and that it remains luminous 
for a long while, even if removed to the other end of 
the room out of reach of B's effluvia. B's sensitiveness 
of the skin has been made to disappear by the hyp- 
notic process ; but any touch or puncture of a pin or 
needle on the outside edge of the phosphorescent or 
luminous coating perceived by A's eyes is immediately 
perceived by B. His body does not feel the sharpness 
of the needle, but the outer edge of his luninous 
effluvia, several feet away from the skin, has acquired 
that sensitiveness lost by the body. And here appears 
a wonderful fact. The water in the tumbler removed 
to the end of the room has acquired that same sensi- 
tiveness. If you pinch the water with your fingers or 
touch it with a pin, B will scream that you pinch him 
or prick him with a pin. But B will not feel the action 
if performed by a person who has no magnetic relation 
to him; in other words, the action of the magnetizer 
alone will be felt in the water by the subject. 

Let us examine now more closely and with more 
details this strange transfer of the sensitiveness of our 
nerves to inert objects, which Col. De Rochas calls the 
"exteriorization of sensitiveness." A's eyes have been 



The Revelations of Nature 177 

brought up by hypnotic process to a state which allows 
him to see the "luminous effluvia." But what he sees 
and describes varies a great deal according to the 
grade of hypnotic sleep in which B is being plunged. 

When B is awake and in his normal state, A de- 
scribes the "effluvia" as a luminous coating on the 
skin ; but as soon as B loses his sensitiveness under 
the action of mesmerism, the coating seems to dissolve 
itself in the atmosphere. Then it reappears like a 
light mist or smoke, which condenses itself and be- 
comes brighter and brighter, till it takes again the 
appearance of a thin coating of light following all the 
forms of the body at a distance of about an inch from 
the skin. B feels then every touch of the magnetizer 
on the surface of that coating. 

If you continue the hypnotizing process on B, A 
will see, around B's body, several new luminous coat- 
ings separated one from the other by a space of about 
two inches. The sensitiveness of B exists then only 
on these coatings of light, and seems to be in inverse 
ratio to their distance from the skin. These coatings 
will extend from six to nine feet from the body. They 
will go through a wall, not being stopped by masonry 
and they will appear in the next room through the 
wall. Now if we make a small statuette or figure of 



378 tt* Revelations of Nature 

common moulding wax and place it awhile in the "lu- 
minous effluvia" of B, then withdraw it and prick it 
with a pin, B will feel the puncture of the pin at the 
corresponding part of his body. If you cut a lock of 
his hair during his sleep without his knowledge, then 
plant that lock of hair on the wax figure and pull it 
slightly, B exclaims suddenly, "Who is pulling my 
hair?" The same results are obtained if you try the 
experiment with the whiskers or beard, or even some- 
times with the trimming of a finger nail. Generally 
in most cases reported by Col. De Rochas the sensi- 
tiveness did not extend over 15 or 20 feet from the 
body of the subject, but there were exceptions. 

The sensitiveness was then transmitted to a photo- 
graphic image of the subject by leaving the plate for 
some time before using it in the "effluvia" of the sub- 
ject. Here in several instances the plate retained the 
sensitiveness of the latter for several days. But un- 
less the sensitiveness of the subject has been exterior- 
ized (transferred from the skin to the "effluvia") before 
the photograph is taken, and unless the plate has been 
well impregnated in the "effluvia," the sensitiveness 
does not exist. Col. De Rochas tells us that he made 

the following experiment on Mme. O . He used 

generally the palm of his right hand to hypnotize her ; 



The Revelatmts of Nature ]79 

he had a life-size photograph of the palm of that hand 

taken. Mme. O was awake and sitting on a 

chair, not knowing what was going on in the room. 
Then one of the assistants, being concealed behind a 
screen, presented the plate on which the hand of Col. 
De Rochas was photographed to the plate on which 

the image of Mme. O had been previously taken. 

At the instant when the gentleman opposed the two 

plates to each other, Mme. O stopped her talk 

and fell asleep on the chair. Then Col. De Roches 

walked behind the screen and woke up Mme. O 

by simply blowing on her image. 

The sense of touch or feeling seemed to be the only 
one exteriorized. It should also be observed that all 
these experiments succeeded only with persons whose 
sensitiveness was either naturally very great or whose 
sensitiveness became developed by practice. Thus, 
this wonderful "exteriorization" and transfer of a 
man's sense of feeling to inanimate objects opens now 
a vast field for new investigations. It shows, in the 
first place, what enormous physical influence on health 
and disease the luminous effluvia of a human being 
can exert. Then again this transfer of sensitiveness 
to inert objects throws a most interesting light on the 
dark and obscure practices of sorcerers and witches in 



130 The Revelations of Nature 

the middle ages. Our forefathers believed in the 
faculty of hurting an enemy under peculiar conditions 
prescribed by sorcerers, by transferring to him a dis- 
ease or by stinging his image duly prepared for the 
purpose. Then again these facts recently discovered 
in Paris by De Rochas and others, who followed and 
repeated his experiments, shows conclusively — in the 
writer's opinion, at least — that the common scientific 
theory based on our present knowledge of matter by 
which we have tried to explain man's nature is 
absurd. 

Now what are the luminous coatings of the effluvia 
consisting of? Each coating must represent some- 
thing different either in kind or in degree. It is hardly 
admissible that they belong to or are integral parts 
inseparable from the mortal body. Yet that which 
can be seen by a hypnotized person must be still ma- 
terial enough to impress his or her sense of sight. It is 
therefore presumable that the luminous effluvia is the 
astral body of spiritualism, but that would not yet be 
the spirit proper, although it would follow it at the 
death of the body. We see further that the sense of 
feeling can be removed from the body and not de- 
stroyed, even momentarily. 



The Revelations of Nature 181 

It tends to reincorporate in the human form, such as 
in a wax figure or in water and impresses itself on 
the human image. If only the sense of feeling has 
been removed from the body at the command of the 
operator, we should not expect the other senses to be 
exteriorized, but it is very likely that every and all 
the senses can be exteriorized, including even the 
faculty of speech. 

In conclusion, the universe as we see and conceive 
it, with all its physical effects, is the outcome of the 
selective vibratory motion of the individual particle 
of matter. But this only opens new fields of inquiry 
which broaden more and more. We still remain at 
the threshold of the wondrous mysteries of Nature. 
There can be little doubt that man in his whole is 
a product of Nature like any other living being, but 
since Nature creates beings who can understand part 
of her work, these same beings must be adapted to 
reach a stage of existence where everything will be 
understood, including the Infinite. 

The supposition that man represents the highest or- 
der of beings in existence which would be the product 
of a blind Nature, while this very Nature, of which 
man is a mere product, is governed by laws which 
his intellect cannot even grasp or discover, very much 



182 The Revelations of Nature 

less destroy or create, is positively ridiculous, yet that 
is the contention of many men who are utterly at a 
loss to explain the mystery of their own existence, 
of which no one has ever been the author. 

If the first man or intellectual being was ever created 
direct, it is not likely to have been in this little world 
of ours, but it might have been on some one of the 
countless worlds of Infinity now long extinct. All his 
descendants, past and future, on all the worlds would 
have been virtually created at the same time by the 
property given to matter of generating life and con- 
tinuing the work of creation. If the properties of 
matter were taken off from it the universe would be 
dead, inert and motionless at the some moment. 

The idea of the direct creation of man and of any 
other organic being, however, is apparently a myth 
born of ignorance, as it is the negation of the doctrine 
of evolution. The fact is that if creation has ever 
been commenced, in any event it is not at all finished ; 
it is going right on now and the work is done by mat- 
ter, which is the one thing whose creation, if created, 
is probably finished. It is not only the creation of in- 
dividual organic being that is going on, but continual 
progressive changes are taking place throughout all 
the worlds of the Infinite, where some are growing 



The Revelations of Nature 183 

and others dying, but matter never dies, and from it 
new worlds spring into existence from the ashes of 
the dead ones through the aeons of endless time. 



II. 



Most of us think we understand what is Time, Space 
and Number, the three branches of Infinity. 

May be we understand as much of it as we are to 
it — practically zero. We usually refer to Number as a 
number of material things or objects, but its relation 
to Infinity is the divisibility of infinite Time and 
Space into infinite Number of units. 

If no matter at all existed, or had ever existed, in- 
finity of void Space containing an infinity of points 
within it would have still existed in the infinity of 
Time past and would continue to exist for Eternity. 
We understand that much that it must be so, because 
it is absolutely past comprehension how it could be 
otherwise. No matter how remote a boundary we 
may imagine for Time, Space and Number, there can 
be no boundary, for, what would make the boundary? 
What would be behind or past it? Time, Space and 



184 The Revelations of Nature 

Number ever, ever, ever! No sophistry can get rid 
of that as far as human comprehension is concerned. 
But furthermore there is necessarily an infinity of in- 
finities, each different in degree, yet each representing 
Infinity. 

If we suppose an infinite number of bodies moving 
through space in a straight line, we may for illustra- 
tion start from a body employing millions of years to 
move one inch and stop at one moving millions of 
times faster than light, with bodies moving at all in- 
termediate speeds between these two extremes, all of 
them could move in a straight line in any direction 
for all Eternity without ever encountering an end to 
Space, for assuming a limit in one case would neces- 
sarily imply a limit in all cases. This means that no 
matter into what number of parts we might try to 
divide Infinity, every part would still represent Infinity 
as well as the whole, and if divided by Infinity itself, 
every part would still remain Infinity. 

If we try to imagine a space as many times as large 
as the visible universe as there are atoms of matter 
within it, up to and including all the faintest stars 
recorded by photography, would this give us the 
faintest idea of Infinity? That would be a mere point 
within it. That and the space of one of the atoms 



The Revelations of Nature 185 

would make little difference for Infinite Space ; so with 
Time and Number. 

Then before such a transcendent mystery may we 
not venture the question : Is not Infinity God Him- 
self? It is at least the nearest or rather unique con- 
ceipt we can have of the apparent entity of a Pure 
Spirit — one whose existence we actually perceive as 
absolute fact, though absolutely independent from mat- 
ter — and who is infinite. 

If the Infinite is not God, it would be a thing as 
great as Himself in incommensurability of extent, in 
immutability, in inconceivability, and apparently not 
created by Him; or, unlike matter and motion, would 
be uncreatable and uncreated as far as human reason 
goes, and the purpose of human reason is evidently 
to distinguish truth from error. If God created the 
universe He did not intend to make of it a lunatic 
asylum, (though men do sometimes, but of course, 
dear reader, it is neither you nor I). 

Thus while we can noti possibly apprehend the 
limitless extent of Time, Space and Number, still we 
understand that they are necessarily limitless, and that 
they are unborn, uncreated, because immaterial and 
ever independent from matter. 

Motion in itself is also immaterial, but it is born 



186 The Revelations of Nature 

from matter since it is matter that moves. If motion 
continues to exist as an entity independently from 
matter after it has been created by it, that would be 
pure spirit, too, but it would not be infinite, and could 
be multiplied in number of distinct entities ad infini- 
tum, while infinity of Time, Space and Number re- 
mains continuous unity ; no part can be detached from 
the whole or its position changed. 

Are we sure to understand what are Time, Space and 
Number in their essence? For instance, the prodigious 
feats of lightning mental calculators, performed with- 
out any written figures to the amazement of profes- 
sional mathematicians, show that a few exceptional 
minds can deal in numbers independently of mathe- 
matical processes and figures. It is distinctly a special 
gift that the possessors themselves are unable to ex- 
plain. Some of them claim that even the sight of 
written figures disturb them in their calculations and 
problems given them to solve must be given in spoken 
words. 

Such persons as a rule have no special memory 
except for numbers. Such special faculty, like all spec- 
ial faculties, must be assumed to represent different 
embodiments approaching Divine Essence in various 
degrees. 



The Revelations of Nature 187 

Would God have made a thing as great as Himself 
which would be patent to all, while He, Himself, would 
not be except by inference ? Time, Space and Number 
as the embodiment of the Infinite fill very well the de- 
scription of one God in three persons : Father, Son 
and Holy-Ghost. They are the only conceivable en- 
tities that do so. 

The resemblance of man or of any intellectual being 
to God would not be in the form of his body which 
may depend upon circumstances or conditions, Out in 
his spiritual nature, more or less independent from 
matter; so that humanity or spirit creation would 
embrace all the worlds of Infinity. 

Time, Space and Number are three distinct entities, 
yet each one contains the other two, and none can be 
conceived of without embracing all. Thus, the idea 
of time can not be conceived without embracing space 
and number; nor that of space without embracing 
time and number, or that of number without embrac- 
ing space and time, even in a limited sense; that is, 
without embracing the Infinite. The three entities 
are inseparable, in the unit as in the Infinite. If we 
think of the space occupied by an atom of matter, but 
leaving aside the atom to think only of the space oc- 
cupied by it, and consider this a unit of space, it will 



188 T&* Revelations of Nature 

be also the unit of number, but it may not be the unit 
of time, for the latter will be related to Eternity. On 
the other hand if we think of a unit of time, say one 
second, it will also be the unit of number, but will 
extend throughout infinite space. Again, if we think 
of the unit of number, that can be figured only within 
time and space as a unit of both, with or without mat- 
ter. Multiples are similarly correlated. 

Was the doctrine of the Holy Trinity founded upon 
or born from this analogy, or is it itself the Holy 
Trinity? Being unaware whether this question was 
ever propounded before, it is propounded here in any 
event. 

The universe is manifestly made up of spirit and 
matter. Whatever is not material is necessarily 
spiritual in its nature, or what else would it be? Inert 
matter would remain inert, lifeless and motionless. 
Matter is the thing we see with mortal eyes, but if 
matter were "inert" it would have to be animated by 
something else for producing all the phenomena we 
behold. That something could not be material and 
immaterial at the same time ; then if not material it 
would have to be spiritual. On the other hand if the 
"something else" is contained by matter itself, then 
matter is not inert ; it is alive, and if alive it contains 



The Revelations of Nature 189 

a spiritual essence ; this spiritual essence is imma- 
terial and manifests itself by motion. 

Then motion must be spiritual and the essence of 
intellect and individual spirits; and if motion in itself 
remains an entity after it has been created, it is still 
more apparent that Time, Space and Number are en- 
tities in themselves, so much so that they contain the 
mystery of mysteries. 



III. 

Undoubtedly no matter is ever destroyed, but it is 
not only the material that is indestructible. The forces 
of nature though immaterial can be transformed but 
not destroyed. These forces are ever extant, conse- 
quently ever active, and the product of this activity — 
motion — must be as indestructible as the forces them- 
selves, for although no force can be transformed into 
motion, motion or momentum as the product of en- 
ergy, can be converted back into energy or contains 
energy in itself. What becomes of all the energy repre- 
sented by permanent, universal motion, from the mo- 
tion of atoms to that of solar systems? An outlet for 



190 The Revelations of Nature 

it is indispensable. What else but spirit life can pro- 
vide the outlet? None better or as good is in sight. 
Nothing whatever can occur in nature that does not 
represent motion of some kind and as such it is an 
entity though immaterial. 

The spiritual quality of the immaterial may and 
must be more or less refined and is consequently sub- 
ject to evolution. Indeed it is only the spiritual that 
is susceptible of evolution, for material forms of ani- 
mate beings are simply the expression of and conform 
to the spiritual condition of the spirit which inhabit 
them. When the flow of vitality is broken the matter 
of the form is left behind and it disintegrates to enter 
into new activities, but there is no evolution of the 
matter itself, and the evolution of the form represents 
the evolution of the spirit which constitutes the real 
imperishable entity. 

Considering that immaterial born entities must 
necessarily be represented by motion, their evolution 
should always mean improvement and would be the 
result of modifications in the aggregate sum of motion 
of the individual. 

Any kind of knowledge is imparted or transmitted 
from one mind to another through motion in the same 
way that combustion is started by the peculiar motion 



The Revelations of Nature 192 

or impulse imparted to some particles of fuel. Con- 
ventional signs or figures whose conventional value or 
significance is known and fixed in the mind is one of 
the means to impart the motion which conveys the 
knowledge through one of the senses, usually that of 
sight. 

Any and all phenomena or occurrence being neces- 
sarily produced by motion as we have seen before, 
when a phenomenon is directly witnessed by one mind 
the motion producing the phenomenon imparts a cer- 
tain motion within that mind and this motion is an 
entity which remains in the mind as knowledge which 
can be transmitted to other minds. The motion would 
no doubt take place in the luminous effluvia and not in 
the grosser matter of the body, though in many if not 
all cases the latter would also be affected indirectly if 
not directly. 

Thus it has been demonstrated experimentally by 
means of a specially constructed and very delicate 
scale that thought directed to a part of the body sends 
blood thither. This being the case, thought must in- 
variably produce some blood motion whether the 
thought is of the body or of anything else. 

It has been and must be assumed,however, that the 
matter of the luminous effluvia is not the mind or spirit 



192 The Revelations of Nature 

itself, but would be the vehicle through which impres- 
sions would be conveyed to it. 

The will of the spirit proper would also impart the 
required motion corresponding to the will. 

Since everything that occurs in nature must be 
produced by motion, everything is governed by me- 
chanical laws— the natural mechanism of matter, aris- 
ing from its properties of attraction and repulsion. 

Events, good, bad or indifferent, being merely the 
culmination of motions, if we deny a quality to the 
motions producing events, we should deny a quality 
to the events themselves. 

f Or in other words, what is not an entity in itself 
could have no quality. Thus if the act of murder, for 
instance, is not an entity in itself, it could be neither 
good nor bad. Any act in itself is not material ; neither 
is its quality, but it is not the less an entity. All that 
occurs in nature being immaterial, if we deny an entity 
to the events or to the motions making the events, we 
might as well deny an entity to heat, for heat itself is 
motion, which cannot be destroyed without leaving 
an opposite force in the matter containing it. 

If you doubt that heat is motion — atomic motion — 
and that as such this motion is an entity in itself we 
will call your attention to another evidence still more 



The Revelations of Nature 193 

c .nvincing that all motion is an entity in itself. Any 
body in motion represents kinetic energy, which is 
absorbed by further motion, and, therefore, if motion 
were nothing in itself then energy would be nothing 
either. Energy may be dissipated without doing ap- 
preciable work, but not without motion of the matter 
containing it, whether tangible or intangible, and we 
know also that it may remain indefinitely in a latent 
condition. 

And again, all potential energy is clearly something 
in itself, although it is not energy in operation and is 
nothing material. It it were nothing after operation 
it would be nothing before, for after doing its equiva- 
lent of work which is embodied in motion, the energy 
has no more existence as such. It has been trans- 
formed into motion and that is the entity which re- 
mains after the energy is no more. Motion in any 
form is a creation from energy which is equivalent to 
energy itself. 

Energy or motion is permanently generated by the 
transformations of the forces of matter; so that all 
energy can be said to be born out of nothing, but it is 
something when born since in fact energy or motion 
is everything besides matter. Obviously we can not 
say that human understanding is matter. Then it 



194 The Revelations of Nature 

must be motion of matter, or what else could it be? 
Full understanding must be one of the ultimate pur- 
poses of our being, and since our partial understanding 
is immaterial though created by matter, we may say 
that this so-called material world of ours is as much of 
a spiritual nature as the one beyond the grave, but 
both the matter and spirit involved are in a more 
rudimentary stage or grosser condition than in the 
world beyond, which is as natural as the one which 
gives us birth. It is apparently a link in the chain of 
evolution of the spirit. 

Motion being creation and all creation the product 
of motion, for that fact alone it is preposterous to 
suppose that our little planet is the only one inhabited 
when all the celestial bodies are in rapid motion. No 
better proof of the plurality of worlds should be re- 
quired. 



IV. 

Unless it can be shown that all the motions, includ- 
ing all life, intellect and events in this world are noth- 
ing which come from nothing and go back to nothing, 
they must proceed beyond, for if they are something 
they can not be destroyed naturally. 



The Revelations of Nature 195 

But if they were nothing they could not come and 
go, they would stay nothing, while their coming is a 
spiritual creation — the only kind of creation we can 
perceive in nature, since it does not appear that any 
more matter besides that which actually exists is ever 
created. 

Think well if you please and see if this is not simply 
a plain truism. I invite the world, the whole world, 
both scientific and unscientific to think deeply on this 
subject and find out whether there is anything what- 
soever in nature, any phenomenon, property, cause, 
effect or quality that is not an embodiment and an 
expression or a potentiality of motion of some kind, 
and whether any such thing can be conceived or de- 
fined, knowing as we do that thought itself is me- 
chanical in its original creation, since its disturbing 
influences upon the natural movements or circulation 
of the blood is a practically demonstrated fact. 

To the materialist and the scientific exponent of 
ologies I would ask: Did you ever stop to think and 
consider that the matter of vour body — the only thing 
about you that can be seen by mortal eyes — is not 
you, does not intrinsically jelong to or form integral 
part of yourself. That matter was in existence before 
you were born and will continue to exist after your 



196 The Revelations of Nature 

so-called death without the least change whatever in 
any of its innate properties. Therefore you take noth- 
ing from it and add nothing to it besides motion, even 
during your life in the body. Not a single atom of 
matter did your life originate or will ever create. Be- 
sides the matter of your body is continually changing, 
i. e., it is being gradually and continuously eliminated 
and renewed. This is nothing new. One portion of 
the matter forming an integral part of your body ten 
years ago may be now forming part of other human 
bodies ; another part may be in the flowers you admire, 
and still another you may again absorb through your 
food and respiration, while the greater part has en- 
tered into one thousand and one other functions or 
remains in temporary repose. So, the matter of your 
body is undergoing continual change, but you always 
remain the same person. The consideration of that 
fact alone should dispose of and completely disprove 
the future resurrection of the body as contended by 
the religionists. Considering that certain parts of the 
body are renewed a great deal faster or oftener than 
others, if all this matter having at any one time formed 
integral part of our body were to be incorporated in 
it and resurrected, then, man after resurrection would 
have a monster body of monstrous shape, bearing no 



The Revelatiens of Nature ]97 

resemblance with the present human form. Further- 
more, the same matter could not be definitely incorpor- 
ated in the body of several persons at the same time, 
though it may have been so incorporated successively 
and temporarily. Hence, man's body is no part of his 
ego. He is made out of or rather by dust though, but 
the dust itself does not enter into his lasting person- 
ality, for the dust remains dust, before, after, and 
always. 

Then, if anything at all has been created in you, what 
is it? If nothing has been created what is it that 
thinks and reasons? Since it can not be matter it 
must be an immaterial entity. If such an entity had 
not been created in you, is it the matter of your body 
by itself that would live, act, think and conceive, only 
to drop such faculties at death time, sending them 
back into nothingness? If you be nothing after death, 
then you are nothing now, for your living only brings 
about a momentary change in the state or condition of 
the matter forming your body. This momentary 
change in the state of matter represents either some- 
thing or nothing by itself; it can not be momentarily 
something and then nothing; this would be contrary 
and against all the laws of nature, involving the final 
annihilation of their purpose and creations, only to 



198 The Revelations of Nature 

bring generation after generation of ignorant crea- 
tures, guessing and wondering at their marvels and 
then vanish. 

The effect of the continuous integration and disin- 
tegration of matter in your body is not merely that of 
keeping you alive with a determined, invariable amount 
of knowledge and experience, for every day increases 
your fund of both and all remains with you, though 
you may not know or remember it, while the amount 
of matter in your body does not increase after matur- 
ity, or if it does you are not wiser on that account. 
Then, what is all this ever increasing store of knowl- 
edge and experience made of, since the amount and 
identity of the matter in your body are independent 
factors which have nothing to do with it? After a 
long illness you may remain with only skin and bones, 
but so long as your mind is clear it is not affected by 
the loss of weight; recuperation with new matter 
leaves it intact. You remember events and actions 
you did at a time when none of the matter at present 
forming your body was a part of it. When one or both 
of a man's legs or arms, or even both legs and arms, 
are amputated he does not lose any part of his wisdom 
or knowledge thereby. Not an iota of his ego. Yet 
his amputated limbs are dead. His body is no longer 



The Revelations of Nature 199 

entire, but he feels his personality entire as before. 
Nay, he even feels as if he had still his missing limbs, 
and he has them, too, but in an invisible condition. 
They could probably be seen by a person in a deep 
hypnotic trance. He still possesses all his intellectual 
faculties as if nothing had happened ; yet if his per- 
sonality resided in the matter of his body he ought to 
find his intellect short of something as well as his 
body. One thing would be inseparable from the other ; 
or rather, there would be only one thing, hence that 
one thing could not be separated from itself, but only 
divided into parts. Should you choose to call his per- 
sonality "life in matter/' the amputation of his limbs 
would remove that part of his personality, for the var- 
ious parts of his individuality w r ould follow the cor- 
responding parts of his body, since they would be one 
and the same thing. Even parts of the brain, It is said, 
have been removed without apparent inconveniece. 

If you deny that you are a spirit now, you simply 
deny your existence, but that does not destroy it ; noth- 
ing can destroy it. Dissolution of your whole body does 
not destroy you any more than the dissolution of a part 
of it does any part of you. This is a fact rationally 
demonstrable on a true scientific base without any oc- 
cult manifestation. The final separation of the spirit 



200 The Revelations of Nature 

from the gross body is only a change of condition, an 
evolutionary process. We may, therefore, expect to 
find the conditions of living after the so-called death 
quite as natural as we find them now, though different. 
And why should it be otherwise, please ? If we are of 
a spiritual nature after death we are of a spiritual na- 
ture now. Our present alliance w T ith and derivation 
from gross matter does not alter the essence of our 
being, which ought to be at least as spiritual as the 
forces of Nature ; neither will its separation. The 
laboratory man expects to find everything in his ex- 
periments on matter, or at the end of a scalpel, but 
only through the laboratory of the mind can he ex- 
pect to grasp a few of the higher truths. So long as 
he does not look deeply into his inner self, he is like the 
blind, burrowing mole, which never can see the light 
by burrowing underground. 

Nothing is the negation of existence, and what is 
non-existent or unborn cannot be felt, cannot be con- 
ceived, for any concept once produced in the mind is 
a creation, an entity in itself. An original concept or 
knowledge first born in one mind, when conveyed to 
other minds represents a multiplication of the original 
creation. This may be compared allegorically to the 
lighting of a match by friction where the lighting is 



The Revelations of Nature 201 

transmitted to any number of matches without fric- 
tion. 

Caloric combustion may be again referred to for 
illustration of the existence of immaterial entities rep- 
resented by motion. Combustion is a chemical action 
whose effect is heat and heat is a physical effect de- 
rived from the molecular motion producing combus- 
tion; so that motion is here turned into an entity 
which, though immaterial, can be felt and the 
fact that it produces innumerable effects, can be felt 
and transmitted, though not seen is the conclusive 
proof that it is an entity in itself. Consequently any 
motion, whether visible or not and whatever its speed 
or form may be, is not the less an entity in itself. The 
simple fact of moving any object from one point to 
another involves various motions which did not exist 
before they took place. Said motions, when once ac- 
complished, are imperishable entities which may have 
no consequence at all, or may be of the gravest import, 
creating other entities, such as throwing a lighted coal 
into a powder magazine. All that occurs for good or 
evil is only motion of matter, but matter is directed to 
act by immaterial causes derived from its own proper- 
ties, and motion of any kind ever means immaterial 
creation which cannot be undone, but only compen- 



202 The Revelations of Nature 

sated for by opposite creation. All thoughts and ac- 
tions being also creations, every intellectual being is 
free to build up his own personality in whatever way 
he pleases, and, "as a man thinketh in his heart so 
is he." 

Matter is never more alive at one time than at an- 
other, though it may be alternately in temporary 
activity and in temporary repose. When combined in 
certain ways, forms, kinds and proportions, so as to 
form a working mechanism or combination, and the 
spark of life is started, a multiplicity of motions is 
evolved in which matter is consumed, or rather 
changed in condition, and the combustion continues 
just as in a lighted lamp. What we call life is organic 
combustion. All the motions derived from this com- 
bustion give birth to a growing entity represented 
by the sum of all the motions combined. This entity 
gradually evolves and directs other sets of motions 
consisting of thoughts and actions. It is the building 
up of the spirit — the real ego. 

We may therefore say again that nothing is lost in 
Nature and that man's thoughts and actions are en- 
tities which will follow him as his heritage and part 
of himself. Indeed, it looks as if they were constitut- 
ing his entire personality. His knowledge and beliefs 



The Revelations of Nature 203 

must be considered as factors, but his thoughts and 
actions are largely influenced by his knowledge and 
beliefs, while the latter are largely, if not entirely 
born of former thoughts and actions. One most con- 
vincing reason if there were no others for holding that 
this is the Law of the Great Cause is that it ought 
to be so for absolute justice to all, so that every one 
may be what he is of his own making and carry with 
himself his own reward. 

Furthermore, man, mind, spirit or whichever name 
our real personality may be called is clearly and nec- 
essarily made up of motion, since motion is the only 
thing that can be created out of matter and no matter 
can be created or destroyed. Beside, the matter whose 
motion makes our personality is merely transitory 
through us during our life in the body, and here is 
the secret of life and being. 

What is the spark of life? Of what is it made? 
It is simply the spark or start of motion of a definite 
kind, because it can be nothing else, because there 
is nothing else conceivable out of which it can be 
made. It is analogous to the spark of fire, in that both 
are derived from and maintained by motion. Energy 
is expended in starting it, no matter how minute the 
quantity, therefore the spark is imparted from an ex- 



204 Iht Revelations of Nature 

ternal source. It may start spontaneously when the 
necessary elements to a definite form of life are 
brought together, but they have to be brought together 
and Nature takes care of that. Once started, the motion 
continues of itself by chemical process, provided the 
elements necessary to a definite form of life are pres- 
ent and the conditions favorable. It is all a question 
of chemistry, chemical mechanism and a starting of 
that mechanism into a building up motion, with the 
proper feed. Of its own accord matter goes on build- 
ing up organic life and growth as it builds a consuming 
fire. Out of the motion independent intelligence and 
spirit are born. 

The human body is a sample of Nature's mechanics. 
It is provided with levers, pipes, coils, valves, strain- 
ers, chambers, channels, return channels, stiff rods, 
flexible rods, diaphragms, whistles, gauges, alarms of 
all kinds, and a multitudinous paraphernalia whose 
mode of action is not even guessed. It contains all 
the principles of man's mechanics and many others 
not yet discovered by man. The whole intricate 
mechanism plays harmoniously, is self-acting, self- 
regulating, self-repairing, automatic, contains pro- 
visions for all disorders the occupant of the machine 
brings about, but often the latter is the stronger and 



The Revelations of Nature 205 

the machine being too abused gets out of order after 
all. For ages to come the greatest mechanicians and 
inventors may discover in the human anatomy most 
interesting lessons in mechanics. Now, our friends 
the materialists want us to understand that all this 
goes for naught and that their wisdom is superior 
to everything else, that blind matter does all and com- 
bines all this together chemically and mechanically 
because it does it and that this is all there is to it; 
that all this calls for no wisdom coming from no- 
where, or that it is the own independent wisdom of 
matter itself. Permit me to suggest then that matter 
is infinitely more wise than you and I. 

Everything in Nature is adapted to promote the 
pleasure, enjoyment and happiness of mankind when 
intelligently made use of. Everything can also do the 
opposite when wrongly employed or directed. Fire, 
for instance, can reduce to ashes a whole forest, a 
whole city. Should fire be condemned and abolished 
on that account? It could not be abolished in the 
first place. Spontaneous combustion, for one thing, 
would cause it to make its appearance again and again 
and the great source of fire — the sun— could not be 
reached. 

It behooves mankind to find the secrets of Nature 



206 The Revelations ef Nature 

and their purposes, which are all for its benefit ; when 
perverted, man has only himself or his ignorance to 
blame for the results, not the Author of Nature or 
Nature itself. 



V. 



This is not intended to be a treatise on morals or 
religion, but if we want to attempt to make at all 
deep sounding into the mysteries of Nature and the 
meaning of our being we cannot ignore the Supreme 
Power behind it. We may, however, take the ground 
that we know very little concerning religion except 
that such power is. The ingenuous legends of the 
sacred writings may contain some truths, but on the 
whole they can hardly be considered fully satisfactory 
to the expanding mind of man, because there are so 
many different creeds and teachings, and we have to 
rely wholly upon the writings and sayings of other 
men. This is hardly a reliable basis to stand on. If the 
Deity wanted us to know by revelation He could make 
thosuands of ways to let us know with absolute cer- 
tainty, every one of us, independently of the sayings 
of others. We may therefore infer that what we don't 



The Revelations of Nature 207 

know it is better for us not to know at this time, but 
that should not prevent us trying to find out; on the 
contrary, it is the incentive that must lead us onward 
and forward, for problems of science and of religion 
are necessarily correlated and complementary to each 
other, so that neither can be considered satisfactory 
unless they coincide. 

Sure enough no matter how natural anything may 
seem to us, Nature and its laws is one of two things : 
it is the work of a Supreme Being or the work of it- 
self. The claim of science is that it is the work of it- 
self and refuse to see or discuss anything else. We 
may let science reap the benefit, but will not follow 
it in this path. Notwithstanding all their material- 
ism most scientific men are not quite prepared to pro- 
claim that man is born and dies like mushrooms with- 
out any more hope of subsequent conscious existence. 
Yet they present us the most singular inconsistency 
in that, not only do they reject all current religious 
creeds for good reasons, but they are still more aggres- 
sive in denouncing as absurdities and rejecting all 
proofs of the existence of desincarnate spirits secured 
through their communication with men and all the 
supermundane manifestations so frequent in these 
days. Then if such scientists believe at all in a here- 



208 Sfife Revelations of Nature 

after, it must be one of their own make, but they 
never told us yet how it looks. Which is the more 
absurd : believing in survival after death without any 
proof and denying that such proofs are possible, or 
entertaining the same belief on account of the proofs 
and willingness to consider and investigate them? 
Whenever any proof is offered, most scientists will 
resort to and readily admit all kind of coincidences 
and impossible combinations of circumstances rather 
than accept the very simplest explanation. This for 
them is an utter absurdity they cannot swallow. 

The degree of education, however, is no necessary 
factor in the acceptance or negation of spiritual mani- 
festations. We see strenuous negation among the 
grossly ignorant quite as strong as on scientific pin- 
nacles, while we find equally fervent adherents from 
one extreme to the other. This is a very significant 
fact not to be overlooked by those seeking the truth, 
as is also the fact that the so-called enlightenment 
based on error is very much worse than plain ignor- 
ance. 

If we want to know anything about actual post- 
mortem conditions we have to discover them as well 
as we have to make any invention or scientific dis- 
covery in any other line. The plea that such dis- 



The Revelations of Nature 209 

coveries cannot be made is idle, for the modern dis- 
coveries or rediscoveries about the powers of the mind, 
such as hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance, mind read- 
ing, etc., are leading there, and those who deride 
these matters are very short sighted indeed. The 
"exposers of spiritualism" assume many things. They 
assume that when they have exposed a fraud this 
settles the whole matter; that since there is fraud in 
this line everything is fraudulent. 

If all that we can discover through exercise of the 
mind were revealed and explained to us by a more ad- 
vanced order of beings, mankind would be robbed of 
its incentives for progress and the most ardent in- 
vestigators would not be slow to complain that their 
endeavors are unnecessary and of no use and would 
naturally stop further inquiry. This is good enough 
explanation that w r e may not and should not expect 
direct revelations from the world of spirits concerning 
what we may find out by ourselves when we try long 
and hard enough. Spirits simply cannot give such 
reliable revelations and if they try they mislead us 
and themselves. There is abundant evidence of this 
fact, and as a rule, spirit communications are not to 
be trusted, unless in purely personal matters. Even 
then, there are all kinds and grades of spirits as there 



210 The Revelations of Nature 

are all kinds and grades of men, the good and the bad, 
the learned in truth and the ignorant or deluded. Even 
genuine mediums are often direct victims of mislead- 
ing communications, and for that reason charged with 
fraud; but there are real frauds, too, and many of 
them. 

There are many more reasons why we should not 
expect reliable information from the world of spirits 
concerning the conduct of human affairs or even 
concerning the conditions of the spirits themselves. 
If everybody were thoroughly convinced that real 
life does not stop at the so-called death and that the 
conditions of existence are at all better in the spirit 
world than in this, suicides would multiply alarmingly 
and this planet would gradually become depopulated; 
the progress of intellectual development would be 
neglected. That is not in the plan of the Infinite Wis- 
dom. It would be rather uncomfortable if we could 
have no privacy or secrets which could not be revealed 
to others by unseen eyes. Secret processes, dis- 
coveries, inventions, business affairs, domestic rela- 
tions of every individual would become public prop- 
erty ; all private affairs of everybody would be an open 
book to everybody. Our liberty of action would be 
practically gone. Neither is that in the plan of the 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 2 1 1 

Infinite Wisdom. If we could know with certainty 
beforehand everything that is to befall us everybody 
of course would be eager to know it, but that would be 
simply a permanent calamity, and if the foreseen 
events were to happen anyway we would be very 
clearly absolute slaves of destiny. This again is not 
in the plan of the Infinite Wisdom. 

But for all that any one who will qualify himself 
may become able to shake hands with spirits and 
converse with them. That is a thing not infrequently 
done at the present day by adepts, yet relatively few 
people realize it, while the fact gains no credence at 
all in the world at large and is dubbed "fake." When 
you see a human form beside you, feeling the pressure 
of his hand, converse with him, and then see him 
gradually sinking through the floor still holding your 
hand as he bids you good-bye, until the hands melts 
in yours and the form vanishes notwithstanding your 
efforts to hold it, I should like the exposers of spiritual- 
ism to explain the trick. 

We must realize that progression goes on on the 
other side as well as here, and that while death makes 
us enter a new sphere of action it does not suddenly 
lift the veil of ignorance in its entirety or to the same 
extent for all. This is frequently stated in spirit com- 



212 The Revelations of Nature 

munications, but if we are not prepared to accept such 
communications as genuine we must consider that the 
existence of the spirit after death, with the possibility 
of its momentary return, is a fact or it is a fancy ; it is 
a capital truth or a capital lie with no alternative. It 
cannot be only a fraction of either or both, no matter 
what is our degree of belief or of doubt in either case. 
Therefore each one of us had better make up his mind 
to accept squarely the negation or the affirmation and 
say so fearlessly if he has investigated to his own satis- 
faction, for it seems that this matter ought to be of 
some little concern to everybody. For my part, I say 
most emphatically that there is superabundant evi- 
dence obtainable that it is a fact for those who really 
want to find out. Those hardened and blind scoffers 
of "spooks" had better hush if they have only their 
own negation and flippant language to offer as evi- 
dence. So far I have been unable to gather anything 
else from them. 

In regard to spiritual manifestations we often hear 
the skeptic say, "Such and such are made of the same 
stuff as dreams are made of," thereby presuming to 
shut the door of argument with a bang. Very well. 
Then are you prepared to give us a clear and certain 
definition and explanation of what stuff dreams are 



The Revelations of Nature 213 

made? For they are made of something, be sure 
of that. If they were made of nothing you would not 
have occasion to mention them, for nothing is nothing 
and needs no other name or definition. There is no 
effect without cause or cause without effect and every 
effect is something. Besides, everything in nature is 
embraced within these two words, cause and effect. 
Everything that we understand as well as what we 
don't understand is immaterial; as to matter itself, we 
don't know what it is. Then what kind of stuff is all 
this world made of anyway; is it so much different 
from the stuff of dreams? The fact is that the real 
awakening is what we call the last sleep — death. 

Can you tell us what kind of stuff your conscious- 
ness and understanding are made of? They are ap- 
parently made of the same stuff as dreams, too, or 
closely related, for it is your consciousness which is 
involved in dreams, not your body whose senses are all 
shut up, all asleep. Some of your dreams you never 
remember in your waking state, but some others make 
an impression on your mind strong enough for you to 
remember them. You see, you hear, you say and do 
things which for the time being are as real in your 
mind as if all occurred in your waking state. You 
understand what is told you and make yourself under- 



214 The Revelations of Nature 

stood, yet your material senses are not there. You 
find yourself in strange places, in strange lands or 
anywhere except where your body is as a rule. This 
you cannot do in your waking state. You can think 
of such places, but cannot be there in person inde- 
pendently of your body as in dreams. What you per- 
ceive in dreams may be all derived from yourself in 
most cases, that is granted : you may call it aberration 
or undirected activity of the inner mind, or whatever 
you like, but it shows that you can communicate with 
other beings, imaginary or real, independently of your 
material senses, and that they can communicate with 
you independently of theirs. It shows further that 
you can see immaterial beings not clothed with any 
gross material body, converse with them and get all 
impressions from them, not only human beings, but 
any immaterial object can be seen as well. This 
consideration is important, as the world beyond is 
said to be as natural as the one we are in. That which 
sees things when we are awake is not our body, but 
our body is the instrument through which things are 
seen in the waking state so long as we are bound 
to it. 

But aside from dreams, telepathic communication 
between living persons is a well authenticated fact. 



The Revelations of Nature 215 

Because the faculty is exceptionally developed in a 
few persons only at the present time is no reason for 
denying it. Furthermore it can be developed and cul- 
tivated like mediumistic powers. The latter faculty 
is that of communicating with the departed and the 
former with the living and must be closely related if 
not quite identical. 

That both are among human attributes can be de- 
nied only by those who prefer to keep their eyes shut. 
Though both faculties are relatively rare and still very 
crude, both are bound to develop further with the 
evolution of man. 

The marvels incessantly wrought from the secrets 
of Nature in our time are only a prelude of what is 
to follow, and those who refuse to see behind it all a 
superhuman wisdom and power give evidence of pos- 
sessing a very low scale of intellect, but usually pre- 
sume to be the real smart ones. Progress has reached 
a stage w r here we must look for its further advance 
by leaps and bounds and the field is boundless. The 
timidly inclined must be set aside and left behind with 
their conservatism. It is not merely material achieve- 
ments that are to be looked for. The spiritual attri- 
butes and powers of the mind and the spirituality of 



216 The Revelations of Nature 

Nature itseif in the majesty of its works is to become 
more and more manifest to all as time advances. 

Since matter and motion of matter are the entities 
out of which all conceivable entities are made, if we 
were to assume that matter itself is not spiritual, in 
any event, all its creations being necessarily 
embodied in motion are necessarily immaterial 
or spiritual ; and since matter possesses this wonder- 
ful power of creating spiritual entities, it must be 
itself endowed with Divine Breath, even if the exist- 
ence of the entities created by it were only momentary 
or temporary; but no product of Divine Breath can 
be perishable, unless according to foreordained Law; 
it is only transformable through evolution until per- 
fection is reached. This is never attained on the ter- 
restrial plane. What we call the laws of Nature are 
really the laws of the Author of Nature. The man 
of to-day who in his present condition could sleep for 
two hundred years and then awaken would imagine 
himself to have been transported into a real fairyland. 
By that time the human race will have improved one 
thousand per cent, physically, intellectually, morally, 
and spiritually. I venture this prediction because at 
this very day means are within the reach of man to 
accelerate this evolutionary process from generation 



The Revelations of Nature 217 

to generation. The power of mental action of the ex- 
pectant mother upon the future personality of her un- 
born child is well recognized and abundantly proven, 
notwithstanding what may be said to the contrary by 
a class of short-sighted exponents of physiological 
functions. But I wish to mention another no less im- 
portant power for good, which, in connection with the 
former, will transform the human family. It is the 
power of post-hypnotic suggestion to be given the 
expectant mother for the benefit of her offspring. 
Hypnotism is God's power placed in man's hands for 
his benefit. It is a revelation and a promise giving us 
the first glimpse of the future spiritual powers and un- 
foldment of man, even in this material world. Don't 
trifle with it. Man has been given the laws of Nature 
to master and to use for his benefit. Out of these laws 
he can accomplish whatever he sets his mind to 
achieve, for they are all powerful. Wondrous things 
without end and still undreamed of may confidently 
be predicted. Mankind has just entered a new era in 
its evolution and what is considered supernatural, 
and for that reason ignored by science, only points the 
wa) r to higher entertainments. 



218 The Revelations of Nature 

VI. 

Man}' people persistently refuse to look or see any- 
thing concerning man beyond the span of human life 
in the body. This is the general attitude of science up 
to the present day, though a change commences to be 
noticeable in some quarters. For them there is no 
manifestation that cannot be accounted for from 
natural causes and laws amenable to scientific explana- 
tion. In this they are probably right in one sense, 
and up to a certain point, for no scientific explanation 
of anything has ever been a complete explanation; 
but if they trust Nature so much, why do they deny 
it the power to act beyond the grave, since death itself 
is only a natural process through which every living 
creature is bound to pass sooner or later, and every 
natural process is merely the expression of a trans- 
formation or a change but never a destruction? 

Some are willing to accept telepathy, for instance, 
as a practically demonstrated fact, which it abundantly 
is, but then they assume that only man in the flesh 
can possess that faculty and consider it antagonistic 
to spiritualism when it is one of the very best evi- 
dences we can have to support spiritualism. Telepathy 
is an interior faculty of the real man, not of his 



The Revelations of Nature 219 

body, which takes no part in it, except that of trans- 
mitting the impressions received in speech. Telepathy- 
is the transmission of thought; thought is immaterial 
and takes no more time to leap over ten thousand 
miles than ten feet; yet "thoughts are things/' as the 
popular saying has it. 

It must be rather when the body is cast off that the 
telepathic faculty is developed to the fullest extent, 
as it would then be the normal means of communi- 
cation, the material senses being absent. If departed 
spirits can communicate between themselves through 
this natural faculty, why not with men and men with 
them, though imperfectly? Man knows his exterior 
but very little of his interior faculties, which accord- 
ing to Swedenborg's inspired writings are opened after 
death. What Swedenborg calls "the interiors" is ap- 
parently what psychologists call the sub-conscious, 
subjective or subliminal mind or self. 

We must logically assume that the realms of the 
great hereafter are governed by immutable laws, just 
as well as the realm in which we live in the flesh and 
the latter is as much one of the kingdoms of the In- 
finite Power as the others. The laws governing it could 
not exist of themselves unless they had been ordained 
by the same Infinite Power. 



220 The Revelations of 'Nature 

Although these things may seem so very strange 
to many, before denying them they would do well 
to find out whether they have fully realized the fact 
that their own personality, though closely allied with 
gross matter for the time being, is in itself absolutely 
immaterial. It would be so even if their personality 
were made out of matter turned into mind or spirit 
and consequently no longer material. But it does not 
necessarily follow that the mind may not remain asso- 
ciated with matter in an unknown state when out of 
the gross body. 

What is still called the "occult" need not be called 
occult any longer, since most everybody may learn and 
practice it in these days. On the other hand, whether 
we call anything natural or supernatural makes no 
real difference, for in reality everything in nature is 
supernatural in its primordial cause and maintained 
by a supernatural Infinite Power, since we cannot log- 
ically account for it otherwise. If it is assumed that 
matter has ever existed by itself and acted by itself, 
then matter is the supernatural thing that no human 
brain can fathom, since it would embody the Infinite 
in the form of time with its ever-changing aspects 
and properties, its life creating powers, its faculty 
of evolving intelligence and understanding and main- 



The Revelations of Nature 221 

taining a working harmony throughout the Infinite by 
immutable laws, yet leaving the most intelligent of 
its creatures powerless to grasp the meaning of it all, 
while itself displaying infinite wisdom. That is sub- 
stantially what materialism amounts to, whether the 
fact is admitted or not. No materialistic deduction 
can escape or fathom the crushing evidence of Eter- 
nity. Any philosophy or theory of the cause of causes 
in which Eternity is neglected as an absolute asser- 
tion and consequently left unexplained is a futile 
makeshift of no account whatever. On the face of it 
materialism practically means that no being, God or 
man, ever existed or will ever exist, who can appre- 
hend the Infinite, since it is the assumption that man 
is the highest expression of being which constitutes 
materialism. To be in doubt as to the existence of a 
Supreme Being, that is, not to deny or affirm, is prac- 
tically equivalent to believing that there is none, for 
it involves the assumption that Nature with its laws 
or the universe, embracing the Infinite, can be what 
it is without one and calls for none. This is high 
science as we have it, the science which considers 
Nature now and ever omnipotent of itself and by it- 
self. 

The notion of science is that at some period of 



222 The Revelations of Nature 

time in the unsoundable depths of the dim past mat- 
ter was diffused throughout space in a native state 
so to speak, and then in some way, not to be accounted 
for, it commenced of its own accord to move, to roll, 
to glide, to condense, to collide, to whirl, and as the 
aeons of time rolled by, nuclei of worlds commenced 
to be formed. The process in the manufacturing of 
worlds went on, and here we are. This or anything 
equivalent is essentially the base of modern material- 
ism. If science is satisfied with that monument I 
wish it good luck, for this problem at once brings us 
face to face with the gates of Eternity, beyond which 
no man can hope to peep. That is to say not on the 
earth plane at least. Why? That is precisely for in- 
ducing the materialist of all ages to acknowledge his 
folly. 

While the doctrine of evolution is admitted here, 
both as to formation of worlds and development of 
living organisms, or life and intellect, that very doc- 
trine leads us necessarily back to a commencement. 
But it is further assumed that all the worlds at pres- 
ent in existence were born from the debris of older 
worlds which no longer exist in the material plane; 
that these may have been born from still older worlds, 
and so on back through no end of time past. This 



The Revelations of Nature 223 

conception, however, leaves the problem of past Eter- 
nity and the infinity of Space unchanged and cannot 
satisfy the human mind as an explanation, whether 
we assume that there was a commencement to crea- 
tion or not, unless at the same time we acknowledge 
the existence of a Supreme Infinite Wisdom utterly 
beyond the grasp of the finite and extremely limited 
intellect of man in its present material plane. This is 
where lies the doom of materialism. 

We must bear in mind as already remarked that 
motion is the only kind of creation we can perceive 
in Nature, unless it be assumed that some matter is 
being constantly created out of nothing; that is the 
only alternative, which can hardly be entertained from 
a logical point of view. So that while matter is the 
basis of the universe it is its immaterial properties 
and effects that count, and these are evidently spiritual 
in essence, yet each is perfectly identifiable. It is 
this identification of the many different immaterial 
entities created by matter and perceived by immaterial 
or spiritual process that constitutes understanding and 
proves the fact of our existence as spirits. And since 
our actual existence resides in the spirit, though bound 
in a gross body for the time being, the latter is only 
a temporary instrument through which our personality 



224 The Revelations of Nature 

is built, but does not constitute our personality any- 
more than the matter producing heat constitutes the 
heat itself. 

Above all things, good, inspiring music is capable 
of awakening our perception of the sublimities of Na- 
ture, but only refined, sensitive minds can appreciate 
its thrilling harmonies and melodies to the fullest ex- 
tent. Why does music please the ear? Is the sound 
of music material, and is the perception of it material? 
Evidently not, but it produces vibrations of matter 
which are transmitted to our mind and which our mind 
absorbs as knowledge and retains as a part of itself, 
for we may remember these vibrations many years 
after hearing them. The sound of music is only one 
of all the things we can remember. What is true of 
music is true of every perception of the mind whatever 
its nature may be, hence the reason why environment 
has so much influence upon our personality when pro- 
longed. 

The most striking proof we have that accomplished 
motion remains an entity in itself, and that man is. 
immortal as a necessary consequence, is found in the 
fact that we have memory. Memory is immaterial; 
as already pointed out it is independent of the matter 
forming our body and consequently from our body as 



The Revelations of Nature 225 

a whole or part thereof. It is not matter, for matter 
in any state can be nothing but matter itself, unless 
it be assumed that it is transformable into immaterial 
spirit, in which event the whole universe would be 
still more spiritual in essence than it is assumed here. 
This latter assumption is the sole alternative imagin- 
able to account for all the immaterial entities of Na- 
ture which I claim to be embodiments of motion, and 
matter would be only an appearance. 

Memory is a recollection of past events, thoughts 
and actions of ours and of others, and acquired knowl- 
edge in general, all of which is immaterial, all of which 
represents embodiments of accomplished motion, all 
of which motions have ceased to be taking place. We 
have them all stored up within our personality. Their 
recollecting may and probably does call for further 
motion, but not necessarily motion of matter from the 
gross body; that would be motion of matter from the 
astral body, which, however, may in turn react on 
the gross body so long as the two have not parted 
company altogether. 

Our conscious mind remembers only a small part 
occasionally of what came to our knowledge in the 
past, but the moment a person is put under the influ- 
ence of the hypnotic sleep he can be made to relate 



226 The Revelations of Nature 

all the incidents and particulars of any event that 
came to his knowledge at any time in his life, though 
long forgotten by his conscious mind. The memory 
of what psychologists call the sub-conscious or sub- 
jective mind is perfect. 

I believe we have only one mind, but as it is de- 
rived from the forces of Nature which have positive 
and negative poles, there must be a correspondence 
in polarity of the mind, and this would embrace two 
sets of poles corresponding to the forces of tempera- 
ture and electro-magnetism. 

The mind is derived from the forces of Nature, be- 
cause it is made up of motion and motion is an effect 
of the forces. The existence of the mind may also 
depend on polarity like the forces themselves, for the 
mind is variable as it grows, and variability implies 
positive and negative poles. 



VII. 



I have endeavored to demonstrate from a really 
scientific point of view that although life is derived 
from matter, it is itself immaterial, consequently 
spiritual. We may remark here that life and spirit 



The Revelations of Nature 227 

are one and the same thing; life is the growing of 
spirit and this growing being effected by motion of 
matter, motion therefore is also identical in essence 
with life and spirit. All life being expressed and man- 
ifested by motion, all motion is spiritual, everlasting 
creation, because any event accomplished is an accom- 
plished fact and will remain so for all time to come. 
It cannot be undone, and consequently cannot be de- 
stroyed. Any motion of any kind is an event or fact 
taking place and it is of facts and events accomplished 
and in the act of accomplishment that the real world 
is made of. Life, which is a succession of accom- 
plished facts, being once born is therefore eternal, 
but ever changing in aspect by the additions made 
to it. From this follows spiritual evolution — the only 
kind of evolution there is or can be, since matter can 
only make its many cycles over and over again, but 
never changing its essence. 

If accomplished events, which means accomplished 
motion, were not entities in themselves there would 
be no conceivable entity in the universe, either tempo- 
rary or everlasting, besides the Infinite and matter, as 
nothing else would exist, unless every event was de- 
stroyed in proportion as it took place, so that we could 
get no memory whatever of any instant preceding an- 



228 The Revelati$ns of Nature 

other, consequently no intelligence, no will, no spirit. 

All living organisms would be temporary material au- 
tomatons merely. Even were life at all possible under 
such conditions it would be closely equivalent to no 
life at all. I do not even consider that this is the kind 
of life giving us the vegetable kingdom, for vegetable 
life represents the accomplishment of events and we 
cannot conceive of these being destroyed in propor- 
tion as they take place or otherwise. 

We may therefore repeat again that everything in 
Nature other than matter itself is a creation born 
from matter. This includes all the forces, life, intel- 
lect, and mind or spirit. This fact should be appar- 
ent to all, and also the fact that all creation is accom- 
plished motion because it can be nothing else. Our 
real persoanlity can be nothing else now any more 
than after death. 

Whenever we do any action, it is by motion that 
this action is accomplished. Our first idea of doing 
this action takes place by motion. The body is the 
instrument through which we do it, both in thought 
and accomplishment, and when accomplished it re- 
mains an entity which we remember. Therefore it is 
through the instrumentality of the matter of our body 
that this entity is created. Matter is thus made to 



The Revelations of Nature 229 

obey the will of our immaterial self, which is the di- 
recting agent, and this action or entity is added to our 
personality or real ego. It is thus through the forces 
of matter that spiritual entities are created, for all mo- 
tion calls for energy. 

A part of the energy expended by a locomotive 
drawing a train on which we ride becomes a part 
of our personality, because it permits us to travel 
great distances and accomplish many things we could 
not otherwise do. Similarly a part at least of all 
energy from any source directed by us to do anthing 
for any purpose becomes a part of our personality. 
Hence all progress in mechanics and the industrial 
arts constitute a very important element in the evo- 
lution of man's mind. 



VIII. 

Nature or matter generates life in all manner of 
forms, in all kinds of places, always taking good care 
to provide means for the perpetuation of all species, 
both animal and vegetable. This it often does by ex- 
traordinary means when the conditions for preserva- 
tion and perpetuation are especially forbidding. From 



230 The Revelations of Nature 

the minutest particle of matter to its totality reactions 
are provided to counteract any action tending to de- 
stroy the equilibrium whenever a law of stability is 
involved. Considering all the marvels of Nature mat- 
ter must be infinitely sagacious indeed to have planned 
everything so well, and it should be extremely interest- 
ing to know how this sagacity is to be accounted for 
if it is its own only. Clearly then, matter would be 
God Himself or a part of Him, and man would be more 
of a spirit than God. But this view excepting the 
last part, may not be so very wide of the mark. At 
any rate my interpretation of matter is that it is a 
form of God's manifestation adapted to provide a me- 
dium for the birth of life and for elementary percep- 
tions in the lower stages of its existence. 

We might say that matter is alive, but it is a great 
deal more than alive ; it is unlimited life giving without 
ever parting with any of its own life. It gives us 
everythng, including our own selves which we build 
from it, or rather, everything it gives us is embraced 
within our own selves and is what goes to make it at 
our own choice. 

Here comes the great question which no doubt the 
observant reader has often thought of before : If this 
doctrine be true, what becomes of all the representa- 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 231 

tives of the animal and vegetable kingdoms after 
death? No man probably can answer this question 
satisfactorily at present time, and I would not attempt 
it unless in some vague hypothesis and perfunctory 
sort of way. But nevertheless I hold that every living 
thing is an imperishable entity. That this entity may 
possibly be dissipated or transformed after death but 
not destroyed. I hold in fact that there is no death 
in the sense of annihilation of anything once alive, 
death being merely one step of evolution ; that is, life 
in any form remains life forever in one form or an- 
other. 

If it were not so, there is no apparent reason why 
man's spiritual existence could not or should not have 
an end as well as that of any animal, for life is born 
of or propagated by matter in man as well as in ani- 
mals and plants, and is immaterial in either. Further- 
more, it is on the assumption that everything alive on 
earth remains alive after the so-called death that 
natural conditions may exist on the other side of it as 
on this side. 

The only fragment of direct evidence I have at hand 
tending to give color to the above is the following 
article extracted from the San Francisco Examiner of 
Dec. 5, 1904: 



232 The Revelatio?is of Nature 

A CASE OF ANIMAL TELEPATHY. 

H. Rider Haggard, author of "She" and other novels 
that treat of the border line between the known and 
the unknown, writes to the London "Times" a serious 
account of his receiving a telepathic message from his 
dog, either at the moment of the animal's death or 
several hours after. 

The novelist writes : 

"On the night of Saturday, July 9th, I dreamed that 
a black retriever dog, a most amiable and intelligent 
beast named Bob, which was the property of my oldest 
daughter, was lying on its side among brushwood or a 
rough growth of some sort by the water. My own 
personality in some mysterious Avay seemed to me to 
be arising from the body of the dog, which I knew 
quite surely to be Bob and no other, so much so that 
my head was against its head, which was lifted up at 
an unnatural angle. In my vision the dog was t^ing 
to speak to me in word, and, failing, transmitted to 
my mind in an undefined fashion the knowledge that it 
was dying. 

"Then everything vanished and I awoke to hear my 
wife asking me why on earth I was making those hor- 
rible, weird noises. I told her about the fearful struggle 



The Revelations of Nature 233 

and that I dreamed old Bob was in a dreadful way 
and was trying to talk to me and tell me about it. On 
Thursday, the 14th, the body of the dog was found 
floating in Waveney, more than a mile away, and on 
Friday two plate layers informed Mr. Haggard that 
the dog had been killed by a train. Bob's collar, 
broken and torn off, was produced, and on Monday 
afternoon one of the men saw the dog floating in the 
water beneath an open-work bridge over the river, 
whence it drifted down where it was found. Care- 
fully weighing the evidence, Mr. Haggard concludes 
that the dog must have been killed by an empty train 
from Harlesdon a little after 11 o'clock on Saturday 
night, as no trains run on Sunday, and that it is prac- 
tically certain it could not have been killed on Monday 
morning. Mr. Haggard therefore confesses himself 
forced to the following conclusions : 

"The dog Bob, between whom and myself there ex- 
isted a mutual attachment, either at the moment of 
his death, if his existence can conceivably have been 
prolonged until after 1 in the morning, or, as seems 
more probable, about three hours after that event, did 
succeed in calling my attention to its actual or recent 
plight by placing whatever portion of my being is 
capable of receiving such impulses when unchained by 



234 The Revelations of Nature 

sleep into its own terrible position; subsequently, as 
the chain of sleep was being broken by the voice of 
my wife calling me back to the normal conditions of 
our human existence, making some last despairing ef- 
fort while that indefinable part of me was being with- 
drawn from it. I recognized further that if its disso- 
lution took place at the moment when I dreamed, this 
communication must have been a form of that telepa- 
thy which is now very generally acknowledged to oc- 
cur between human beings from time to time, and un- 
der special circumstances, but which I never heard of 
as occurring between a human being and one of the 
lower animals. 

| "If, on the other hand, that dissolution happened, 
as I believe, more than three hours previously, what 
am I to say? Then it would seem that it must have 
been some non-bodily but surviving part of life or of 
the spirit of the dog which as soon as my deep sleep 
gave it an opportunity reproduced these things in my 
mind as they had already occurred, I presume to ad- 
vise me of the manner of its end or to bid me farewell. " 
Appended to the letters are certificates by a veteri- 
nary surgeon who inspected the body of the dog, 
which he says must have been in the water three days, 
and by Mr. Rider Haggard, Angela Rider Haggard, 



The Revelations of Nature 235 

Lilias R. Haggard, L. R. Hildyard and Ida Hector as 
witnesses to the nightmare story having been told at 
breakfast on Sunday morning. Mr. Haggard says he 
will welcome any investigation by competent persons. 



IX. 

These considerations seem to amount to a call for 
the doctrine of successive reincarnations or rebirths 
in all living organisms, whereby a chance would be 
given to each individual entity to improve itself at each 
new birth, for this would be the logical conclusion to 
be reached in explanation of the progressive evolution 
of species on earth. Can we get scientific evidence 
that reincarnation is a fact? May be it is not very far 
off, but if rebirth is a fact with man it is a fact with 
every living organism. That is the only view satisfac- 
tory to man's understanding, judging from what is 
already known. 

From these observations we may conclude further 
that the size of the body, either in man or animals, has 
nothing to do with the degree of intelligence. A flea 
may be as intelligent as an elephant and probably is. 
Consequently the whole intelligence and spiritual ex- 



236 The Revelations of Nature 

istence of an elephant may be reincarnated in the body 
of a flea or vice versa, but different animal bodies pro- 
vide different faculties. Humanity may have passed 
through successive reincarnations in all kinds of ani- 
mal bodies. This, of course, is only a suggestion, not 
an affirmation. 

We may suggest again, merely as a question for 
study, that our tastes in food, colors, etc., and all 
natural propensities may have some relation to former 
animal forms of life. For instance, we may like best 
the meat of animals representing our most recent con- 
nection with brute creation, or else the kind of food 
preferred in that state of existence. 

Another great question is : What becomes of all 
events not under the control of any individual living 
organism or of all living organisms combined, i. e., the 
sum total of all the motions made by and occurring 
upon or within celestial bodies and not directly con- 
nected with the creation of living organisms or life? 
My hypothesis is that they go to make the life and 
spiritual counterpart of the celestial body in which 
such motions or events take place; so that the earth 
for instance would possess such a spiritual counter- 
part embracing all its past history, and which will re- 
main in existence forever, whether the earth continued 



The Revelations of Nature 237 

to exist as a planet or is annihilated as a celestial 
body through some cataclysm or natural death. 

The earth may also possess an astral or etheral but 
still material counterpart, for accomplished motion 
alone as an entity is wholly immaterial. 

I consider besides that such invisible spheres of the 
earth must be the abode where departed spirits dwell, 
at least for a time and until they have reached perfec- 
tion. This would give us a clue for verification of the 
wonderful tales of seers claiming to have penetrated 
into spiritual realms and seen things not expressible or 
describable in speech while still living in the flesh, 
among whom Emmanuel Swedenborg stands most 
prominently. Even at the present time there are seers 
living claiming to have had experiences of this kind. 

The principal evidence I have to offer in support 
of this theory — that of spiritual spheres of celestial 
bodies — is that if my theory of life be true the former 
must necessarily be true also, but that is a most potent 
argument. It is corroboratecTby other evidence, how- 
ever, as we will see. 

It is often stated by the more advanced students and 
exponent of modern psychology that there are finer or 
more subtle forces than those we know of. With this 
view I agree and assume it to be true, but at the same 



238 The Revelations of Nature 

time submit that these subtle forces are derived from 
the grosser forces which we do know. The mind of 
man, or rather man, is a seat and nucleus of such 
forces and an instrument capable of putting them into 
what I will call vibration for lack of a better term, 
for what is put into alleged vibration is immaterial. 
This is what gives us telepathy and all the still very 
little understood and unknown powers of the mind. 
Telepathic communications must be effected through 
the medium of the spiritual spheres of the earth. 

This reminds us of the wonderful discoveries of 
Reichenback and of Col. de Rochas on hypnotism, de- 
scribed in Chapter I, where spiritual or astral spheres 
are seen in the dark by hypnotized or sensitive sub- 
jects to surround living persons, animals, plants and 
the poles of magnets. The earth, which is a great 
spherical magnet, must possess such spheres extending 
all around it. This is another piece of inductive evi- 
dence whose import will be readily understood, since 
it is almost as certain to be a fact as if it could be 
actually perceived. From this it must be inferred also 
that the spiritual spheres of the earth are linked with 
it and that the case is the same with all the worlds 
of the Infinite. 

Considering that a simple permanent magnet pos- 



The Revelations of Nature 239 

sesses spheres of "luminous effluvia" which the best 
sensitives could see to extend a distance of over two 
feet around the poles, it follows that if the earth were 
as strongly magnetic as a bar magnet proportionally 
to its size, the earth spheres would extend for many 
million miles all around it. This, however, is assum- 
ing that it is the magnetism which is seen in the 
spheres, and that cannot be the case, for plants or 
small animals would not be sufficiently magnetic or 
develop luminous effluvia at all perceptible to non-hyp- 
notized sensitives, as in Reichenback's experiments. 
Yet it is quite likely that any body strongly magnetic 
is the seat of effluvia, because it is a seat of motion, so 
is a plant, so is an animal or man. 

My surmise is that the so-called luminous effluvia 
is nothing more nor less than the spiritual and astral 
spheres of the body bearing it, or the astral sphere 
alone in any event. 

The truth or falsity of this hypothesis may probably 
be verified experimentally. 

If the effluvia includes the spiritual sphere or 
spheres, it follows that we can actually see spirit — 
absolutely immaterial entities — while living in the 
flesh, although it w r ould probably be necessary to be in 
a hypnotic trance or some other abnormal state. 



24O The Revelations of Nature 

Since the spiritual spheres are made of accomplished 
motion, the more there is of it the larger should the 
sphere be. Then the sphere of a newly made magnet, 
of a young plant, a young animal or a child should be 
smaller than that of older representatives of each 
specie. 

In order to find out about this matter, I would make 
the experiment with an old and a newly made magnet 
of the same strength and size, because in case the 
effluvia of these two magnets should present consider- 
able difference in size, this would be a very plain proof 
that the spiritual sphere forms part of the effluvia if 
not the whole of it, for in the case of magnets, if the 
effluvia consisted of the astral sphere only there could 
be no such difference in the size of the effluvia. The 
magnets being of the same strength the effluvia should 
be alike in both whichever else than accomplished mo- 
tion it may consist of. 

We may reasonably hold that everything we per- 
ceive in the material world has one or more spiritual 
counterpart in an ascending scale, universal evolution 
being understood to work unto Eternity. 

This chapter will end with the following interesting 
article taken from the San Francisco "Examiner" of 
Oct. 22, 1903 : 



The Revelatiofis of Nature 241 

THE PERSONALITY AND THE BODY. 

By H. J. W. Dam. 



It apears to be a characteristic of human beings that 
the personality and the body are separable. That the 
personality or individuality or Ego can leave the body 
during life, go away to an indefinite distance and re- 
turn to the body. That death is merely a permanent 
separation, the personality containing its existence 
under the same general conditions as characterized its 
absences during life, while the body is resolved into 
its elements. 

There are four general classes of cases which have 
been carefully examined and responsibly vouched for 
which have led observers to this belief. These four 
classes may be characterized as follows : 

i. Clairvoyance. 

2. Possession. 

3. Apparitions of the living. 

4. Apparitions of the dead and the phenomena of 
Spiritualism. 

To illustrate the faculty called Clairvoyance, here 
is a case from the records. It is an old case, chosen 
because of certain characteristics : 

Miss B. is a fragile, delicate girl of twenty, whose 



242 The Revelations of Nature 

health has been shattered by an accident four years 
ago, in which she received a severe blow on the head. 
The clairvoyant power is most commonly found in 
women whose vital hold has been weakened in some 
such way. This is not invariably the case, however. 
The writer has known clairvoyants, both male and 
female — always non-professionals, who had nothing to 
gain by the exercise of their gift — who in all other 
respects were perfectly normal and exceptionally vig- 
orous in their physical constitution. 

Miss B., sitting in a room in Providence, R. I., with 
a number of ladies and gentlemen, is asked if she will 
go to Roxbury, Mass., where, as is well known, she 
has never been. This request is made by an investi- 
gating Protestant minister of the highest standing,, 
who lives there. 

Miss B. consents and relapses into unconsciousness. 
Her personality or individuality, or Ego, goes away. 
It cannot be said that her mind goes away — and this 
is a most interesting point — because, wherever her 
personality may go, she still sits in front of you, un- 
conscious, and tells you what she is seeing and what 
she is doing. Her touch with her body is constant. 

She goes to Roxbury, following the railway. She 
goes, as she says, through the air. Motion is unde- 



The Revelations of Nature 243 

niable and time is an essential factor. This time of 
transit, which appears, so far as the records go, to vary 
directly with the distance, is the first point upon 
which an exhaustive investigation would probably 
seize. There is plenty of data concerning it already. 

She reaches Roxbury, which fact appears from her 
questions and her description of familiar landmarks. 
She asks if she may go into a shop which attracts 
her. She is told that she may. She wants an apple. 
She is told that she may have it. She takes it from a 
stand, eats it and says that it is very nice. Then she 
is confused and blushes. Asked why, she says she has 
no money to pay for it. She is given some money, 
lays it on the counter and goes out. 

These details are given because anybody who is 
analytical can see their importance. Miss B.'s entire 
personality in all respects, including her self-conscious- 
ness and her sense of humor, is clearly in Roxbury. 

She goes out of the shop and asks her way. The 
minister directs her along the streets, she turning cor- 
ner after corner, as is clear from her description of 
them. Finally she reaches the minister's house. 

She enters the house, and, as directed, goes into 
every room from garret to cellar. She accurately de- 
scribed all the furniture, decorations and persons there 



244 The Revelations of Nature 

present. To remove the possibility of telepathic in- 
fluence, the furniture, paintings and decorations have 
been disarranged in a way which no one present, in- 
cluding the minister, knows. Her description, verified 
the next day, is found to be perfectly accurate. 

Passing from one room to another she says she is 
very tired and asks if she may rest on the sofa by the 
4oor. She is told that she may and does so. This 
fatigue, most frequently complained of by disembodied 
personalities and ascribed by them to the strain of 
communication under adverse circumstances, is also 
full of interest and points to some very interesting 
physical facts. 

She goes all over the house as requested, describes, 
comments, admires and questions precisely as if she 
were a material guest and the minister were showing 
her over his home. When the house has been minutely 
inspected and the minister announces himself as satis- 
fied she returns to herself and becomes conscious. 
She knows nothing of where she has been and of what 
she has seen and said. 

This is an ordinary case of clairvoyance. A hundred 
cases with a hundred different clairvoyants who have 
no training, no knowledge of each other, no possible 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 2 A 

community of action, will all reveal the same general 
facts. 

The best clew to the physical facts which underlie 
this phenomenon lies in a remark of "Pelham's" dur- 
ing the "Piper Experiments. " These experiments 
were conducted by Dr. Hodgson, representing the 
Psychical Society, through the mediumship of Mrs. 
Piper, of Boston, and covered a period of ten years, 
from 1887 to 1897. The chief communicating spirit 
was "Mr. Pelham," a young lawyer of the University 
Club, New York, who had promised Dr. Hodgson that 
if Dr. Pelham died first he would do all in his power 
to reveal to Hodgson the truth concerning post- 
mortem conditions. 

Mrs. Piper's personality, as in clairvoyance, had 
gone away, Pelham was using her body for purposes 
of communication precisely, though with much greater 
difficulty, as Miss B. used her own body. This fact 
was constantly manifest and was the basis of much 
inquiry and discussion between Hodgson and Pelham. 

Pelham was on one occasion asked to go to New 
York and come back and tell them what his father 
was doing. He went, precisely as Miss B. went, came 
back and said his father was walking along the street, 
going to a photographer's and carrying a cracked pic- 



246 The Revelations of Nature 

ture of him (Pelham). This was absolutely verified 
as to time and facts and the astonishment of the father 
and mother, who had no knowledge of or belief in the 
phenomena under investigation, which unmistakably 
appears in their letters. 

Pelham was asked to describe the conditions under 
which he still existed. He answered: "I exist as an 
Ego, combined with Thought. I cannot make this any 
clearer to you." 

Well, that is the way we exist right now, but our 
personality animates a body of clay which the ma- 
terialists consider our personality. This habitation 
shuts off the perception and some faculties of the more 
purely spiritual state. 



X. 

Notwithstanding his smallness it is glorious indeed 
for man to know that there is no end of time for him, 
for the Power who made him want the eternal bliss 
of all, and His laws are such as to bring them there 
in the long run, but man is given the privilege of fol- 
lowing the longest or the shortest road, the length of 
which is determined by his right and wrong doings, 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 247 

anci not by any special creed, tenets, ceremonial prac- 
tice or ministration of any other man. 

Any man who pretends to own a set of keys for 
opening the byways of a paradise to other men is ob- 
viously a fool or an imposter, but more foolish are 
those who accept it as truth. Here is an example, be- 
hold : A man who has expended his worthless life 
in a career of crimes of all kinds, at the last moment 
allows himself to be persuaded to confidentially con- 
fess his misdeeds to a priest who gives him the absolu- 
tion by a few Latin words and signs of the hand. 
That man's soul is saved and he will share for eternity 
the blessings of the "elect." Another man of good 
moral character who never seriously wronged any- 
body but who positively derides the claims of the 
"Church," at the last moment cannot change his mind 
and dies without. Woe to him : that man's soul is for- 
ever lost. If that is not simply a supremely impudent 
audacious outrage to human intellect and understand- 
ing, then we are all idiots. 

Man has to find out all truth by himself. In this 
way only is he fully free. If the truth were told him 
by supernatural revelation he would not believe it and 
would consider it an imposition, claiming the right 
to accept or reject it. 



248 The Revelations $f Nature 

The many religious doctrines contain probably some 
kernel of veiled truth, but it has to be disentangled 
from a great mass of error, and the whole truth we 
cannot well expect to reach on the material plane, for 
further progress would then stop. 

The purpose of the Creator cannot be to condemn a 
single one of His creatures to eternal torment and 
misery. Think of Eternity with not a ray of hope! 
The sole idea brings a shudder of horror penetrating 
to the marrow of the bones and is a most abominable 
blasphemy. How much more so if it should extend 
to a majority of human beings! If the teachings of 
any of the older religions concerning the saving and 
the loss of the "soul" of men were true, God would be 
an inexpressible, pitiless, hateful, fiendish monster of 
cruelty and injustice beside which the most ferocious 
criminal that ever lived would be a harmless lamb in 
comparison. Like the tyrant who thirsts for blood, 
God would thirst for the suffering of ever increasing 
millions. An endless army of human beings would be 
constantly marching by the million to eternal torture, 
solely because they either happened to be born with 
bad natures, or lived with bad environment, or could 
not believe what was told them by some class of self- 
styled teachers of the laws of God, with nothing to 



The Revelations of Nature 249 

prove their claims but books printed by men, originally 
written in ages of deep ignorance, with no sign of 
Divine authorship, and full of statements disproved by 
scientific evidence; or again because they never had 
the opportunity to hear these teachers or learn the 
contents of their books ; because they failed to be born 
under the auspices of some certain creed — the only 
true one — (every one of them is the only true one, 
otherwise of what use would it be?) or failed to learn 
its tenets and distinguish it as the real thing; (it would 
be necessary to study them all first, spend a lifetime 
at it and have nothing else to do), all of which condi- 
tions are generally beyond the control of every indi- 
vidual. 

Those, however, who are lucky enough to buy a 
ticket for the other way, even if only at the last 
minute, those are the few ones who catch a big prize 
at the lottery of life or God's lottery. 

No man or all men combined can possibly do any 
good or harm whatsoever to God. Why then should 
He be so vindictive without cause against his own 
helpless, unfortunate creatures who did not ask to be 
born, either good or wicked; why? Pray give us the 
answer, oh ye sages of the world. If they were at 
least annihilated for evermore since they were brought 



250 The Revelations of Nature 

into the world without their consent being asked, they 
would be in luck, but no, nothing of the kind; they 
have to suffer. God made them so as to enjoy their 
dismal plight eternally. 

In men's tribunals mercy is shown by putting dan- 
gerous criminals out of the way by the most expe- 
ditious means and with the least suffering, but at 
God's tribunal there is to be no mercy, and all but a 
small minority will be found criminals. So that after 
living a few years of more or less wretched existence, 
most of us, dear brothers, must get prepared to be used 
as feed for God's furnace, under the management of 
his horned Majesty you know. Term of punishment 
by agonizing tortures of Hell-fire and indescribable 
anguishes with no possible pardon : Eternity ! 

Our burning at the stake, and other torturing inven- 
tions are child play and futile attempts to imitate 
God's devices, all being over in a few moments and the 
occurrence rare. They are not even the shadow of 
a foretaste of what await the victims on the other 
side. But we hear people talk of cruelty, savagery 
and ferocity among men! Pshaw, all men are doves. 

Yet the teachers of all denominations tell us that 
their God is infinitely just and good and that we must 
not trust our reason, but only what they say. More 



The Revelations of Nature 251 

than that : it is extremely sinful to listen to or to read 
any "impious" work which might make us think. And 
so is the world going. That does not speak very well 
for the intellect of the human race, but it is improving. 

Take away the bugaboo of terrible punishments in 
an unknown realm and all the ancient religions fall to 
the ground so far as unbiased minds are concerned. 
As to the biased ones, their beliefs once planted in 
their mind, no matter how absurd, when held long 
enough become a sort of cultivated insanity almost 
ineradicable because they grow with them and make a 
part of their own selves. 

All religions have had their usefulness on the 
ground that, in the absence of a knowledge of the 
truth, a superstructure of morals had to be provi- 
sionally built on hypothetical premises. It is the same 
in this regard as with scientific matters. But now the 
time is coming when science and religion will be re- 
united and found mutually complementary of a whole 
philosophy. 

Both science and religion will have to make great 
concessions, especially the latter, which has made no 
sensible progress for thousands of years, because all 
creeds are based on alleged revelation and therefore 
dogmatic. But since we had no revelation concerning 



252 The Revelations of Nature 

the laws and secrets of Nature there is not much rea- 
son for assuming that we should have had revelations 
on ethics, and all religions are only codes of ethics 
with allegation of supernatural or Divine authority 
and various assortments of fancied duties toward the 
Author of all. 

One of the best ways, not to say the very best, for 
proving genuineness of supernatural revelation con- 
cerning man's duties, would have been to associate it 
with revelations of a scientific nature, but these we 
are still waiting for as a direct positive statement. 

Still we are having revelations, or rather manifesta- 
tions enough from the spirit world to satisfy the unso- 
phisticated investigator of one thing, which is that 
death does not end all. This is another instance in 
which the authority of the schools is to give way to 
the authority of accumulated and multiplying evi- 
dences of many kinds. 

Although we meet with many conflicting accounts 
and theories in the tenets of spiritualism, the latter 
offers the only gate through which scientific investi- 
gation of man's destiny may be approached success- 
fully. This cannot be carried on by the laboratory 
method, but that is no reason for science or anybody 
to disparage investigators in this line. 



The Revelations of Nature 253 

The trouble with the Bible, any bible, is that it is 
builded upon a stumbling block for a foundation — the 
story of creation — which in the light of present knowl- 
edge is manifestly inadmissible, both in regard to time 
and the true relation of man to the animal kingdom. 
The story of creation as narrated in the Bible plainly 
shows gross ignorance of many great verities dis- 
covered in modern times, especially in astronomy, 
geology and biology. 

Was matter ever created out of nothing? How and 
when did the world, or the first world, commence? 
or did it ever have a commencement, w T ith a com- 
mencement of life at some point of the Infinite? How 
many worlds have existed successively and simultane- 
ously? How many are existing now? What becomes 
of animals after death ? If they are turned to nothing 
at death, man must be turned to nothing also, or the 
rightful measure of justice to animals would be denied 
them. Furthermore man himself is descended from 
the animal kingdom, therefore if there is no life or 
existence for animals after death, at what stage of 
man's evolution did he attain a claim to his existence 
forever? These are only a few of the points upon 
which the Bible gives us mighty little reliable informa- 
tion. Neither do we find it outside the Bible. The 



254 The Revelations ef Nature 

chasm of ignorance of mankind is still so intense that 
we may consider ourselves as barely emerging from 
the depth of chaos, and it looks as if man had to solve 
by himself those deep mysteries confronting him, with 
possible assistance from the world beyond when we are 
prepared to meet it. If this is the case man must pos- 
sess within himself the germ of knowledge which only 
awaits cultivation and development or evolution, but 
the initial story of the Bible only tends to smother 
both. From deep down the sub-consciousness of man 
will come the revelations. I wish to advance the 
proposition that the germ of all knowledge to be at- 
tained as well as that already attained lies within the 
sub-conscious or negative pole of man's mind and that 
what part of truth may be contained in the sacred 
scriptures of all creeds is derived from that source 
through men in whom the subliminal sight was highly 
developed either naturally or by special design of the 
Deity, yet not exempt from wandering astray. This 
would account for the errors and the multiplicity of 
doctrines and tenets extant in religious matters, at the 
same time, implying the evolution of a divine spark in 
man, more or less perverted by him ; so that the bibles 
of the world would be at once products and tools of 
evolution, and should follow it. 



The Revelatio?is of Nature 255 

The laws of God are simply the laws of Nature, and 
we may trust tfiese to cause all wrongs to be righted 
in the end, for they necessarily extend beyond the ma- 
terial plane, since man himself is a product of these 
laws and as such embraces laws within himself of 
which he knows still very little. 

In correlation with the foregoing we may proclaim 
that the Trinity of the Infinite is God himself for a 
triple reason: Because God is Infinite; because the 
above is the only infinite spiritual entity conceivable 
to man as certain to be a fact ; because God would not 
expect all men to believe in an entity inconceivable to 
them and supported in the abstract only by hearsay of 
other men, self-styled instructors, who know no better 
than I do, while the Infinite is the universal sign mani- 
fest to all as a concept of the Supreme. 

If the Infinite were not God, it would be a com- 
panion entity transcendent human reason quite as 
much as God himself, and there is no call or implica- 
tion for such an assumption, even in any of the higher 
creeds extant. In consequence of which the belief of 
mankind that the Infinite is God would be perfectly 
excusable and justifiable before God Himself, even 
though it were not so. But in the absence of a direct 
unmistakable revelation to every human being, it is 



256 The Revelations of Nature 

inadmissible that such a necessary mistake should have 
been imposed upon mankind by the Divine Wisdom. 

Anything as great as God in any particular must 
necessarily be identified with God Himself. This is 
simply a plain dictate to man's reasoning faculties. 
We might say further that this is the explanation of 
our lack of instructions upon things which man can 
find out by himself and which in most cases he would 
not or could not believe if revealed to him. 

We will conclude by saying again that nothing is 
lost in Nature and that man's thoughts and actions 
are entities which will follow him as his heritage and 
part or the whole of himself. 

Accordingly spiritual man like everything else in 
Nature except matter, is the product of the transforma- 
tions of the forces in that matter whereby its motion 
and consequent creative power is perpetual. This is 
no uncertain theory ; it is a fact that should be mani- 
fest to all who take the trouble to reflect. 

I dare assert positively that herein lies the solution 
of the basic principles of the mystery of life and the 
irrefragable proof of our spiritual nature and immor- 
tality. Before science can be true it shall have to in- 
troduce the spirituallnto its vocabulary. 



The Revelations of Nature 257 

XL 

A recapitulation of the principal great principles 
enunciated herein and considered as proven or very 
near may then be summarized as follows : 

i. Forces have positive and negative poles. Heat 
and cold are the opposite poles of one single force ; so 
are electricity and magnetism. 

2. Both forces are derived from the chemism of 
matter. So is everything else than matter itself and 
embraces all life and motion in the universe. 

3. The motion of the universe is permanently main- 
tained by the combined play of the positive and nega- 
tive poles of the natural forces through mutual polar 
transformations and the energy derived therefrom, 
which is thus inexhaustible. 

4. Excepting the Infinite and matter, everything 
else in Nature is represented by motion of matter and 
is consequently immaterial or spiritual in essence. 

5. Accomplished motion remains an imperishable 
entity in itself and is the basis of the spirit of man or 
the man himself, who is therefore immortal. 

The preceding doctrines will no doubt create con- 
troversies, but I hope the seeds are vigorous enough 
to grow in spite of anticipated opposition or even in- 



258 



The Revelations of Nature 



difference. I advise the real champions of progress to 
investigate along these and other lines and they can 
hardly fail to get some reward if persistent. It is not 
necessarily essential to have ever passed through the 
portals of any university or college to look for and find 
out the truth. In fact that may be a hindrance. Na- 
ture's great Book of Hope is open to all and all may 
learn to read its pages, for we, ail, have before us 
Eternity. 



JUN. 26 1805 



